Starfall
by Lomonaaeren
Summary: HPDM slash, past HPGW. A Dark hex dissolves Harry's marriage to Ginny, and sends Harry down into a spiral of depression. To console himself, he keeps a private journal in the persona of Ethan Starfall, normal wizard with a big family. Draco sends a desperate letter asking for help with Scorpius; Harry finds it, and responds as Ethan. Perhaps he shouldn't have. COMPLETE.
1. The News

**Title: **Starfall

**Disclaimer: **J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.

**Pairings: **Harry/Draco, Harry/Ginny, past Draco/Astoria, Ron/Hermione

**Rating: **R

**Warnings: **Angst, manipulation

**Summary: **When the truth about a seemingly minor Dark hex Harry has suffered leads to the dissolution of his marriage with Ginny, Harry spins into a downward spiral. His private consolation is creating a fantasy life for himself in his journal as Ethan Starfall, a normal wizard with a big family. When he receives a random owl Draco Malfoy has cast into the void as a plea for help with his son Scorpius, Harry replies—as Ethan. There's no reason, he thinks, for an epistolary friendship with Draco to go further. But Draco might have different ideas about that.

**Author's Note: **This is likely to be a long story, updated fairly regularly. It is, however, very angsty.

**Starfall**

_Chapter One—The News_

"Auror Potter."

Harry stood up at once when he saw the mediwitch's face. He had come to St. Mungo's for nothing more than a routine examination, the sort all the Aurors had to have after being hit with Dark spells in the course of a case. Harry had encountered thirteen Dark spells this time, although one of those had been the Imperius Curse and he'd shrugged it off with ease, and the rest had all caused momentary pain or just scrapes.

He'd thought. But the mediwitch was pale and clutching at the door, her body taut, as if she couldn't come further into the room.

"What is it?" Harry asked gently. He Summoned a chair over and unlocked her frozen hand, helping her sit down. He also Summoned a glass and conjured water to pour into it. "Did someone threaten you because they wanted to see my medical results?" That had happened before, with some of the crazier fans.

The mediwitch sipped from the glass and seemed to grow calmer. "No," she said. "It's just…one of the hexes you were hit with. Did it hit you near your groin?"

Harry blinked. "Yes, actually. But I didn't have any bruises or blood there, and everything else—everything else was normal the evening after that." Now he was the one blushing, as though to make up for the mediwitch's pallor. He had never been with anyone but Ginny. He didn't like discussing sex with anyone else, either.

The mediwitch closed her eyes. "I hate this," she breathed. "I'm new, and so I get all the hard work. Like telling you what that hex really does."

"What's your name?" Harry asked softly, taking one of her hands. It brought her out of her trance enough to look up at him, and it calmed some of Harry's racing heartbeat, too. At least he knew that he always felt better when he helped someone. "Why do they always assign you to do this?'

"Forsythia Yellowborn." Yellowborn gave him a tentative smile. "And I told you. I'm the newest one. No one else wants to do it, so…"

"That's still terrible of them," Harry said firmly. "An experienced Healer should do it because they can spare people and themselves more pain." He flashed her a smile. "I'm sure that the news isn't all that bad, is it?" Yellowborn's nervousness was probably making it look worse than it really was.

Unexpectedly, Yellowborn's eyes filled with tears, and she glanced away from him. "I'm sorry, but it is," she whispered. "The hex—if it had hit elsewhere it would probably only have affected you minimally. But it interacted with the other Dark magic that you had on you, and that and the place it hit you—" She steeled herself one more time, then blurted out, "It acts like an infertility hex, Auror Potter."

Harry stood still. He thought that his hand in Yellowborn's hand had gone limp and his ears were ringing, but at least his sight wasn't blinded with tears, and that was the important thing right now.

_Infertility_.

He had briefly studied infertility hexes in Auror training, as he had all sorts of other curses. They were the sort of curse that had been more popular in the past than in the present. Pure-blood wizards liked to cast them on their enemies. Depriving them of a family and the continuation of their bloodline had once been seen as the best kind of revenge.

Harry's thoughts said that, dimly, while most of his body said that he was falling down a long tunnel with no end in sight.

"And it can't be healed?" he whispered. "Or reversed?"

"Maybe it could have been," Yellowborn said, wiping away what looked like tears. "But only with Healing there in the first minute or so after the hex." She looked at him and swallowed. "I'm sorry, they told me not to say that. But it's the truth, and I think you deserve the truth."

"But why—so many hexes can be reversed," said Harry, even as he remembered the Auror training that said the old curses pure-bloods cast on each other couldn't be, and that was one reason they were so devastating. "Why not this one?"

Yellowborn closed her eyes. "Because it resulted from an interaction of the Dark magic that you'd already suffered in the battle with that hex. It wasn't just a single spell. It was a whole combination of them. To reverse it, we would have to cast a lot of other magic on you, magic that replicated the effects of those curses, and then we'd have to know exactly what hex it was." She looked at him. "I don't think you know."

Harry shook his head dazedly. He had been in the midst of battle-fury, and he had had a lot of opponents. The hex had been non-verbal and could have come from any of them. They'd already interrogated the prisoners and proved that most of them didn't remember which spells they had used. It was like that in the midst of a duel, sometimes, and battle was usually worse.

"I'm sorry," said Yellowborn again, sounding desperate. "This was just such bad luck. The person who cast the hex didn't mean for it—they didn't try to cast an infertility curse. That's just what it happened. It was bad luck."

_Just like everything else in my life, _Harry thought, rubbing his face with one hand, and then dropped it and managed a smile when he saw how anxiously Yellowborn was looking at him. "No, it's okay," he said as softly as he could. "I know you couldn't do more than you have, and it wasn't fair to make you come to me and break the news. I do appreciate that you found the courage to do it anyway."

Yellowborn bit her lip and lowered her eyes. "I hope you find some other way to reverse this," she said. "We can't do it here, but maybe somewhere else can. There are experimental Healers, different techniques, you know."

In different circumstances, Harry would have laughed. He had never heard anyone at St. Mungo's say anything good about experimental Healers and different techniques that operated outside their sphere of influence.

But it was these circumstances. And Harry still felt as though the ground was unstable under his feet, as though he was spinning down a tunnel and didn't know when he would stop falling.

"Auror Potter? Are you all right?"

_No. I'm not going to be all right again. _All Harry could think about was the way Ginny had said they might start a family soon, and how he wanted to rage and strike out at the universe for what it had done to him. All he _wanted _was a family, blood relations, people who could give him what he'd grown up without, and the universe had to take that away just like it had taken away his parents and his godfather and his innocence and his ability to live a normal fucking life.

But showing that to Yellowborn wouldn't be fair. Harry had to go home and tell Ginny; she was the only one who could properly share his grief. For now, he forced a smile and looked up.

"I will be."

* * *

Ginny couldn't stop crying.

Harry sat beside her at the kitchen table with his arm around her, in silence. He was glad now that he'd first got the news in front of Yellowborn, someone he had to be strong for, and then he could go home and be strong right away for Ginny. He still had this hopeless little drum beating at the back of his mind, but at least it wasn't going to overpower him right now.

"She said there was nothing they could do to reverse it?" Ginny was whispering. It sounded as though the sobs had torn her throat. Harry tightened his arm hard again and wished this hadn't happened, again, for the ten thousandth time. He knew what family meant to Ginny.

"No," said Harry. "They did talk to the wizards we captured who were flinging all those curses at us, and they didn't know who had cast it, either. One of them could have, and not remembered it. Or it could have been one of the ones who got away."

"Then the Auror Department needs to send people after the ones who escaped right away!" Ginny twisted around and leaned against him. "They should do that anyway. What if they come back and hurt you?"

Harry sighed and lowered his head so his nose brushed the nape of her neck. She smelled soft and clean and easy to love. "I know. But we don't know their names. We got their leaders, but even they don't know the names of everyone who was working with them. They operate in little groups like that, interconnected but hidden, so no one can betray all their secrets if they get captured."

Ginny's hands wrapped around his upper arms and squeezed. "But there's still a chance," she said. "That it could be reversed. If you capture the right people and figure out the right sequence of spells?"

Harry hesitated, but her eyes shone at him. The hope was too precious. He couldn't bring himself to shoot it down. "Yeah, maybe," he said. "Even though it would take a long time."

"I don't care." Ginny's head leaned more firmly against his chest. "I want to have children, _your _children. Do what you can to find them."

Harry said nothing, embracing her and bowing his head again, but he didn't think that he could make promises. She seemed to take his hug as an implicit promise in and of itself, and for now, that was all it could be.

* * *

"I know how much this news means to you." Kingsley spoke the words with his eyes fixed on the pile of parchment at the front of his desk. "But Harry, we can't put all our manpower into this single case. And I don't want you taking as many risks as Ron said you had been in your pursuit of these wizards." He raised his eyes at last, and glanced at Harry's bandaged hand. "Ron also said that you spent more time in St. Mungo's last week than this report shows."

Harry's face burned, and he covered as best as he could with an awkward clearing of his throat. "Well, I mean—I didn't think I should have the Ministry cover my medical expenses when it was my own stupid fault I ran into that trap."

"I see." Kingsley folded his hands with the same slow care. "I understand that the loss of your ability to have children has hurt you deeply."

Harry nodded and fastened his own gaze on one of the paperweights Kingsley kept on his desk, which had been a gift from Harry and Ron after the first year they had worked together as Auror partners and Kingsley had backed them up on some of their unpopular findings about the links between Ministry officials and Dark wizards. "The mediwitch who talked to me about it said maybe the spell could be reversed if I caught the wizard who had cast the spell and we could understand what it was and how it interacted with the other hexes on my body."

"Yellowborn is the mediwitch you're talking about?" Kingsley picked up a folder from behind the desk.

Harry stared at him in alarm. "Yeah. What is it? Is she all right?" He started to stand, worried she might have got in trouble with her superiors for telling him the truth.

"She is," said Kingsley. "But this is another report from her, and I think you should read it in its entirety." He handed it across the desk, then turned and began busily to clear some of the parchment from the tallest pile he had.

Harry opened the folder with a clanging sense of doom in the back of his head. He was breathing faster than he should, he realized. He shut his eyes and counted backwards to ten, with a pause of seconds between each number, before he continued.

_Dear Auror Potter, _it began. _I'm sorry, but I was wrong about us only needing to know the hex and how it interacted with the other Dark magic in your body. I didn't realize then that there was a time limit. We might have been able to do something if we had known right away—although even then it's hard to be sure—but too much time has passed now. The traces of magic on your body have faded away so we can't cast the spells on the exact areas anymore. We didn't keep detailed records because we were just interested in healing their effects, not pinpointing exactly where they struck. I'm sorry._

There were more documents, photographs and explanations of some of the curses Harry had been hit with that day, but Harry didn't have the heart to read them. He laid the folder down on the desk.

Then he picked it up again. If he was going to kill the hope he had inadvertently given Ginny, he would take the proof that the hope was dead with him.

"Can I go home now, sir?" he asked, without glancing at Kingsley. He had to be alone for a few minutes. Just a few minutes, in the lift or at home when he got there. Ginny might not even be there right now. Her last practice had gone badly, and the coach had summoned the team together to work out why.

"Yes, Harry."

Kingsley's voice was deep with what Harry thought was probably compassion, but he would do something unforgivable if he stayed to hear it right now. He nodded back, keeping his eyes shut, and fled from the room. It was a good thing he knew the corridors of the Ministry so well.

* * *

Ginny didn't cry this time. She simply sat there with her hands pressed into her eyes and the folder on her lap. Harry sat with his arm around her shoulders again. They were on the couch in the drawing room this time, and there were no sobs, no tears.

It was too dry for that, too hard, like the bones of Harry's arm felt, like the bones of Ginny's shoulder blades felt.

Ginny finally leaned against him, and began to weep again. This time, it was the soft sound of giving up. Harry rested his chin on the top of her head and went reeling into misery himself.

What was it going to _mean, _that they couldn't have children? It wasn't just that Molly wanted grandkids and Ginny had always grown up wanting them and assuming she would have her own sons and daughters someday. Harry wanted them, too, wanted them _desperately. _It would be like having his parents back again. Real people he was blood-related to. People he could love and protect and adore. He wouldn't have been able to protect his parents if they were still around, but this just made that all the more special. His parents' shades had walked with him when he went to his death—what he'd thought would be his death—in the Forbidden Forest. He wanted to walk beside someone someday and be proud that he was there for them and protecting them and helping them.

_It isn't over forever. You know Ron and Hermione would let you play with their own kids, and help them, and teach them Defense, and all sorts of other things. And you still have Teddy and Victoire and Dominique and any other Weasley kids._

But it wasn't the same—the way, Harry knew as her sobs dried on his shoulder, that it wouldn't be the same for Ginny. Children of his _own _family. That was what he wanted. He loved Teddy, he would love being an uncle to Ron and Hermione's children, but he also wanted children of his own blood. He'd never had a family, other than maybe Dudley at the very end, and he hadn't heard from Dudley and Aunt Petunia at all since the war. He wanted…

He wanted something he was never going to have.

"Harry?"

Harry gently smoothed Ginny's hair back from her forehead. "Are you okay?" he asked, even though that was a stupid question. She'd just spent almost an hour crying. Of course she wasn't okay.

"I'm okay." Ginny's hand tightened in his, and she lifted her head. "Are _you_?"

"Not the best, but I reckon I'll survive." Harry kissed her temple. Her eyes were hollow. He reckoned his must look the same way, though. "Do you want something to eat? Something to drink?" She'd cried so much that he thought she might actually have dehydrated herself, although admittedly he didn't know much about that.

"Some tea?" Ginny asked with a wistful little smile, and Harry nodded, detached himself form her, and went to make it. The motions of his wand as he boiled the water and fetched the tea itself were soothing.

Until he started thinking that he would never teach them to someone else, someone smaller than he was, with red or black hair and maybe his mum's eyes…

Harry shook his head violently. He wasn't the only one affected by this. They would get through it. Honestly, he was at his best when he had someone else to care for, the way he'd had to watch over Yellowborn and avoid blaming her when she first announced the news to him, and the way he had Ginny now. He was going to be strong. He wasn't going to collapse. This was just the way it was, and the way it would have to be.

He didn't intend to die of the news, or his grief. He would make it in time. It would just be harder than he had thought it would be at first, dealing with the death of all those little dreams. But he would have someone by his side when he did it.

* * *

"There's nothing I can find, Harry." Hermione sounded as though she was talking at a funeral. "Even the books on modified infertility curses basically say that there's no way to reverse one once it's cast."

"I knew that," Harry told his cup of tea, and leaned back in the wooden chair at Hermione's kitchen table. Just because he liked to care for other people didn't mean that he didn't appreciate them taking care of him, too. "But thank you for researching anyway."

"I want you to know that you're _always _welcome over here, to play with our kids," said Ron vehemently, getting up and coming around the table as if he thought Harry might challenge him on that. "I mean, when we have them."

Harry gave him a tired smile and slapped his best friend's arm. "I know."

Ron wavered and fidgeted one more moment, and then blurted out, "Mate, if it was something _I _did, if I didn't watch out, if I wasn't careful enough—"

Harry cut Ron off with a roll of his eyes that must have been eloquent, because he heard Hermione snicker. "Now who's the one who needs that speech of yours on making everything your fault?" Harry asked rhetorically, shaking his head. "_No, _Ron. We don't even know for sure who cast the spell or when it landed during the battle. It could have been because I wasn't watching or someone got lucky. It could have been one of the wizards we captured or one who got away. No one knows. And I'm not going to have you blaming yourself for something that could have been my fault as much as yours."

"Right," said Ron after a second, and smiled at him. "I have to say, you're dealing really well with all this, mate."

Harry smiled back. It wasn't like anyone was inside his head to feel the despair and hear the screaming nightmares that mostly didn't happen at night. "I know that I'm still alive. And I really appreciate you letting me—knowing I can be part of your kids' lives." He looked across the table at Hermione.

"You're going to be godfather to _all _of them," said Hermione fiercely. Then she paused. "That is, the two we're going to have."

"Hermione, you know Mum wants more than two," said Ron, in the tone that told Harry this was an old battle.

"But _I _don't," said Hermione, and she and Ron disappeared into the middle of the mutual bickering that, at least since they had got married, marked how strong their relationship actually was with each other, and which Harry would have been alarmed to find had stopped.

Harry leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. He would survive this, with the support of his friends and his family. With his job. With people to take care of. With the promise of children in the future.

The despair that shrieked in the back of his mind would just have to suck it up.

_And the despair that's in Ginny's eyes?_

Harry shook his head briskly. He couldn't think about that right now. He had to think about what was in front of him, the hope instead of the despair. He wouldn't give up on his life even if he was missing the thing he had most wanted. He used to think when he was at the Dursleys' that nothing would ever change and nothing would ever let him get out of there. He'd been wrong then, and _since _then, he had tried to remember the incredible change that had come over his life and how another one might happen any second.

* * *

He managed to hang onto that hope until he got home, and realized Ginny was nowhere in the house. "Gin?" Harry called uneasily, walking into the kitchen, where she usually would have been making dinner by now. It was her turn to cook, and she hadn't said anything about an extra practice or meeting with the team this afternoon.

Then he saw a note in the middle of the table, and relaxed. It was probably telling him that she had been called to one of those unpredictable meetings or practices after all.

He stepped towards it, and then paused. The clock that Ginny had bought years ago, in the shape of an owl that would flutter and hoot when the hour struck, was missing from above the mantel.

Harry swallowed, and picked up the note.

_Dear Harry,_

_I don't want you to worry. I'm over at Mum's for the night. I just wanted some space and time to think about it. I'll come back tomorrow. Love, Ginny._

Harry lowered the note carefully to the table, the way he would put a sleeping baby to rest. His heart was beating too fast, and for no reason. Ginny had only gone overnight. It wasn't as though she was abandoning him.

But it felt like the beginning of the end.


	2. Slow Motion

Thank you for all the reviews!

_Chapter Two—Slow Motion_

"I don't know what to do."

Harry hesitated, rather than walking right into the kitchen, the way he had planned to do when he realized that Ginny had come back from the Burrow. From the sound of things, she was talking to someone. It was probably someone from the Harpies. Just like Harry had Ron and Hermione, those were her friends, the ones she confided in.

Harry edged away from the kitchen. He didn't want to overhear things like this, even accidentally. He and Ginny trusted each other too much for that.

"I want you to follow your heart," the other person responded, and Harry froze again. That was Molly, not someone from the team. "It's always the best guide you can have." A soft silence; Harry could easily picture Molly squeezing Ginny's hand, the way she had done for Harry so many times. "You're a Gryffindor, you should know that."

Ginny laughed, a watery sound. "But what if my heart is telling me two different things? What if I want Harry and I want children?"

"Then the best thing you can do is be honest with both him and yourself, as soon as you can," Molly said firmly.

Harry slipped away then. He shouldn't have stayed as long as he did. He wasn't entitled to overhear what went on between a mother and a daughter.

And he didn't want to have heard what he did. When he got up to their bedroom, he lay down on the bed and closed his eyes in case Ginny came in and wondered what he was doing there, but his heartbeat wouldn't shut up and let him relax.

Of course he knew that Ginny could still have children. The curse only affected him, and those experimental Healers he had visited, although they couldn't recreate the circumstances that had made him infertile or reverse the hex, had been able to reassure him that he hadn't passed on his infertility to Ginny by sleeping with her.

He had just never considered that she might choose to leave him.

_Maybe that wasn't what that was about. Maybe you're paranoid. Maybe you shouldn't be thinking so hard about something you were eavesdropping on anyway. Aunt Petunia always said that you never overheard anything good about yourself when you were eavesdropping, anyway._

Harry had to snort at that, because his life had got pretty low if he was reduced to thinking of something _Aunt Petunia _had said as advice.

But his head continued to reel, and when he eventually heard the flash and flare of the fire that marked Molly's departure, he didn't go down and talk to Ginny the way he half-wanted to. She wasn't the only one with conflicting desires. He fell asleep with his cheek pillowed on his hand instead, and only opened his eyes when he felt her fingers touch his hair.

"Harry?" Ginny's voice had a soft little whistle in it, the way he had heard before, but only when she was sick. Harry, still yawning, rolled over and took her hand.

"Yeah?" His voice was soft, too. That seemed to help Ginny. She looked off to the side for a second, took a deep breath, and met his eyes again.

"I thought of something that could help us have children," she said. "It would be hard for both of us, but I think it would be the best solution, in the end." Her voice was rushing along like a stream by the time she reached the end of the sentence, and her hand tightened on his in a way that made Harry gently force open her fingers and run his over them to soothe her.

"You know I would do anything," he said quietly. "You know I want children. I want to raise them and teach them and protect them and—I just want _family _again, you know? I can't know my parents, so I wanted to know my kids."

Ginny was looking down at the bedspread, but Harry saw her wince. From that, he knew what would come out of her mouth, although he didn't say anything. Let her get through it, say what she needed to say.

"They wouldn't be _your _kids, exactly," said Ginny. "I mean, they would be mine. And yours, because you would help raise them. I was thinking that I could—there are people who could help. People who wouldn't mind sleeping with me to give me…" Her face trailed off. She was as red as Harry thought he must have been when he was speaking to Yellowborn. They just didn't invite other people into their sex lives.

Harry closed his eyes. "And could you be absolutely sure that someone else you wanted to sleep with wouldn't insist on being part of the kids' lives?" he asked, voice tight. "That he wouldn't want to be a father to his children? Because I would, if I was still capable."

"Well, no," said Ginny, in such a reluctant voice that Harry thought she probably had considered that and hadn't been able to think of someone she would want to sleep with but who wouldn't want contact with the kids. "But that doesn't mean you couldn't _both _be fathers. You would be the father in the most important ways—I think. I mean. I think I could convince him that he—that it was okay—"

"No," Harry said softly.

Ginny looked at him with anxious eyes. "You think I couldn't convince him? But I wasn't thinking of asking him to give up all rights to the kids. Or not saying they're his. I was just going to ask him not to go around saying or acting like he's their _only _father."

Harry looked away from her. "Maybe it's selfish, but if it was okay with me to just have adopted children, then I'd already have Teddy and any kids Ron and Hermione have," he whispered. "I want children of my _own _blood, Ginny, without another bloke who could say that he's more their father than I am." He hesitated, then blurted out the next idea that had arisen in his mind. "I know Muggle women get donations. They don't have to know who the father is. The father doesn't have to sleep with the woman or have any idea the kid is his."

"Donations of _what_?" Ginny asked, but she figured it out before Harry could say anything. "Harry, no, that's _revolting_."

"How?" Harry demanded, sitting up and turning around. "I mean, I don't think it would work, because I still want kids of my own, but that would solve the problem of the kids' father wanting to step in and interfere." He grimaced. He could imagine little worse than a conflict between two fathers over whether it was the right thing for a kid to be punished, or to start flying early, or to visit the Muggle world. He didn't ever want to subject children to that kind of thing. At least, if he played with Teddy or Ron and Hermione's kids, they would always know that Andromeda or Ron and Hermione were the ones who were really raising them.

"It's revolting," Ginny repeated, and wrapped her arms around herself. "I want to make love with someone, and look in his face, and know that his children are growing inside me."

Harry winced, feeling as though someone had pinched all the nerves in his arms at once. "Well, that's nice, but you can't do it with me anymore," he snapped, and looked away.

"If you would be—if you would think about it," Ginny began, evidently deciding against using some word that might be "reasonable." If that was the word, Harry was glad she'd changed her mind.

"I don't want kids of someone else's blood," Harry whispered. "I don't want you to make love with someone else." He glanced sideways at Ginny. "And you already have someone in mind, don't you?"

Ginny flushed redder than he'd ever seen her go. "So what if I do? At least I'm trying to _solve _the problem!"

"Well, I told you about the Muggle solution," Harry snapped. "Anyone can go there! It's not like that—at least that way, there'd be no other father interfering. They wouldn't even know who you were or that your children were being born."

"That's revolting," Ginny whispered again. "That's the really revolting part, that they would never know. And what if I couldn't find a wizard who'd—donated?"

"I assume that most people who do donate are Muggles," said Harry. He couldn't understand what she was on about. "Unless there's some wizards living in the Muggle world who do. Why is that important?"

"If we had a child who wasn't magical because the father was Muggle," Ginny said, "how would you feel?"

"I would love a child who was a Squib!" Harry had to turn around and stare at the wall. He took a deep breath. "I had a dream last year that we had a son who was a Squib. It didn't matter. It would _never _matter. Not to me."

"If it was a child of your own blood," said Ginny. "But what if it wasn't? Would you really be able to look at a child who wasn't of your own blood and never feel resentment towards him or her if it turned out they didn't have magic?"

"And you think I would never resent a child who wasn't of my own blood if you conceived them with someone else?" At least Harry was calm enough that he didn't want to stomp around the room and fling things at the thought of his wife in bed with someone else. "Besides, what if _they _were a Squib? There's a lot of pure-blood inbreeding."

"Not in the Weasley family!"

"You interbred with the pure-blood families just like everyone else!" Harry swung around and glared at her. "And didn't your mum have a second cousin who was an accountant or something?"

"I can't—how could you fling that back in my face?" Ginny was shivering, facing away from him. "You can't understand how afraid I am to go into this Muggle bank and do something with somebody's—things, but you can tell me that it would be my fault if I made love with someone else and we had a Squib child?"

"You were the one who was afraid that we would have a Squib if the father was a Muggle!" Harry raked his fingers down through his hair. Sometimes the gesture soothed him, because it reminded him of all the times in the past when he'd done that and had problems and managed to overcome them, but it wasn't working this time. "Listen, Ginny, it's too soon to be talking about this, all right? I still need time to absorb that I won't ever have kids."

"I want them," said Ginny quietly, with dignity. She stood up and looked him in the eye. "I want them _soon_. And if you can just see things my way, then you'll have them. With me. They just won't be half yours."

Harry closed his eyes. He wondered if he was being selfish, if he was being unreasonable. Maybe it was silly to think that whoever Ginny slept with would want to be in the kids' lives every second, or that they would be confused about who their real father was. Maybe it was worst of all to deprive Ginny of her chance to have children.

"I always wanted to have kids who were mine by blood," he whispered. "There was none of my family left alive. I want them to _be alive_."

"I know," said Ginny. "Harry, I know. But adopted kids are the only way that you'll ever have them now." Harry winced, but he'd been telling himself harsher things for the past week, trying to get used to the facts. "I just thought—you love me so much. I _know _you do. Couldn't you love my children, too?"

"Why can't we both adopt?" Harry whispered. "Why can't we adopt one of those children we're hearing about now who lost their families recently because their parents died in the war and their grandparents adopted them, but their grandparents are dying now?"

"Because I want children of my own!"

Harry looked at her, and spread his hands. "And so do I."

Ginny closed her eyes, then uttered a quiet laugh that would have cheered Harry up if it was less soaked in despair. "Yes, that was sort of stupid of me, wasn't it?"

"Not stupid," said Harry. He licked his lips and found them coated with a dry saliva that felt like fuzz. "I think that we're both having a hard time dealing with it. I know I am. And we're not thinking about things, and we're not thinking about consequences. I'm sorry."

Ginny reached out and took his hand. Her hold was fragile, and so was her smile; it faded a few minutes after she had taken his hand. Harry waited. He thought things were better than if they were screaming at each other, but—he didn't think Ginny had completely changed her mind and decided not to sleep with someone else to have children.

"I really want kids," Ginny whispered. "I've been thinking about it for a while, deciding whether I would leave the Harpies at the end of next season, or whether I would play for a while when I was pregnant. I can't give up that dream."

"And I'm sorry," Harry said, his voice stiffening in spite of himself, "but I really don't want you sleeping with someone else to get pregnant."

Ginny stared at him. "You couldn't learn to love—my kids? You love me, Harry. I assume you would love my children."

Harry shut his eyes, exhausted. "You know what I think about that already. If we weren't married and you had children, I would be happy to be an uncle to them. But Ginny, I'm in love with you. I think adopting children together is our best bet. You want to begin looking for them? I don't mind a boy or a girl first. We can think about it."

"I just want them to be of my blood so much," Ginny whispered. She hesitated, and then added, "And I can still do that."

Harry heard the very slight emphasis on the word _I_, but he didn't want to acknowledge it. It hurt too much. He turned his head away, and dropped her hand.

"Can't you compromise a little?" Ginny was stroking the bed near his fingers, without quite touching him. "Meet me in the middle?"

"How can I do that, when you want to have children with someone else?" Harry opened his eyes and blinked at the window. He'd thought he'd slept until the evening, but no, the light of late summer afternoon was still coming through it. It was strange, and made him feel stranger.

"I mean that _one _of us can have children," said Ginny. "And that means that one of us should be able to. We can't just go off and adopt a child when we could—we could be depriving a couple where neither of them can have children from having one."

Harry rubbed his eyes with one hand. "I don't think there are many couples like that," he muttered. "One of them might be infertile, but the other partner accepts it and they both adopt a child together." He knew that Muggles had different ways of handling it, but he wasn't going to discuss that, not when Ginny was so revolted by the one situation that Harry knew anything about in detail.

"You could learn to love a child who was related to me."

Harry shook his head. "I can't compromise on this, Ginny. Maybe if it was the Muggle way, then I could, but I can't _stand _the thought of you sleeping with someone else."

Ginny closed her eyes. When she opened them again, her face was still and cold. "Well, you'll have to. Because I want a baby, and this is the only way to have one."

"_Not _the only way—"

"The only way I'll accept."

Harry stared at her. He thought now that the note she had left him the other night _had _been the beginning of the end, but not in a way that he'd anticipated. Or maybe the conversation with Molly telling Ginny to follow her heart had begun it, and Ginny had decided that she wanted children more than she wanted her marriage.

"What will happen if I go out today and find someone to give me children?" Ginny asked, with a bright, false tone to her voice that Harry knew well. It was the one she used when she was hoping that he would contradict her.

But Harry only shook his head. He didn't have the words. He had tumult, and nothing else, spilling up behind his eyes and staying there. He bowed his head and turned his back on Ginny.

He heard her short gasp, the sign of such hurt as he'd only caused her a few times since they got married. He thought he could repair everything now if he turned and took her in his arms. That was what he had done the other times. He and Ginny both had tempers, but they did love each other. Harry could feel the love beating in him like another heart, the same love that didn't want Ginny to sleep with someone else. He would have let her go and do it if he didn't care.

_Or if you were unselfish enough to let her follow her desires._

Harry hunched his shoulders. And maybe he could have been that way, but this was so _sudden_. He and Ginny could wait, couldn't they? She didn't have to have a baby right away. He thought she was just running off without thinking because the news of Harry's infertility had been so sudden, too. Harry wanted time to come to terms with it. He thought she should have that, too.

He turned around. Maybe he had found the words that would make her listen to him. "Can we wait a while?" he asked, and he thought he had the eloquence to make her change her mind.

But Ginny was no longer there. Listening now, Harry thought he could hear her talking to someone in the kitchen below, probably through the Floo. Maybe she would spend the night over at the Burrow again.

Harry buried his head in his hands, and sat there until his stomach calmed down, and so did his emotions, a little. Then he looked up. He really needed to talk to someone, and he thought it would have to be Hermione. Ginny wasn't her blood sister, and Harry reckoned that the slow-motion collapse of their marriage would put Ron in the middle more than it would Hermione.

_Slow-motion collapse_. Was that really what was going to happen to them, all because they had got impatient and couldn't wait?

Harry shook his head. He didn't want to think about such things, not alone. He wanted to talk to Hermione and have her laugh at him and tell him that it was crazy and he was mental and there would be a way to work this out.

But he had a rush of adrenaline through his veins, the way he got on a bad case, that warned him it might not happen. Not this time.

* * *

"I don't know what's got into Ginny." Hermione was frowning, pushing her hair out of her eyes so that she could concentrate on Harry and the cup of tea in front of him. "I don't know why she wants to get pregnant so suddenly. Were you talking about it?"

"We were talking about it, but we hadn't decided on a date or anything." Harry sipped at the tea, more because Hermione was looking at him than because he wanted it. His throat felt too dry for the tea to affect it. "She wanted to see what would happen in her current season with the Harpies, and then—then decide."

"And now she wants something that she thought she could have, that she could think about in the future, and which she's afraid that she's lost forever," Hermione whispered, her expression lightening. "Oh, I think I understand now. It's not right, but she wants to rush into something to celebrate still being able to have children herself." She reached out and gripped Harry's hand tightly.

"_Celebrate_?" Harry thought he would choke on the word, but he did manage to get it out enough for Hermione to understand.

"Do you remember what happened at Fred's funeral?" Hermione asked, instead of responding directly.

Harry clucked his tongue and looked away. Fred's funeral had been sadder for George than anyone else, but sad enough for the rest of the Weasley family. Molly hadn't stopped crying during the entire burial. Arthur sat there like a stone, not even able to pat Molly's back or say anything comforting to her. Ginny had held on tightly enough to Harry's hand that his fingers were mashed when he finally managed to take them out of her hold.

And when the burial was complete and the small stone tomb rose above Fred's body, Ginny had taken Harry's other hand and drawn him to his feet, not saying a word, and they had Apparated home and made love for two hours.

"It wasn't _at _Fred's funeral," he muttered, for a final rebellion, even though it was weak and he knew it.

Hermione gave him a smile that was almost too gentle and understanding to be real. "Ron and I did the same thing, Harry. It's natural to want to celebrate life when you're in the midst of death. Maybe not every time or just in that way, but I also think it's why so many people get drunk after funerals. Some kind of celebration, some way to spit at death."

Harry shut his eyes. He and Ginny had only been teenagers then, not married, but maybe it would have been better to conceive a child then, so that they wouldn't end up like this.

"And so this is what she's trying to do," he whispered. "Run out and—and mourn and celebrate that she's the one who escaped being infertile?"

"Yes, I think so," said Hermione. "It's only a theory, but it's one that would make a lot of sense."

Harry bowed his head, and said nothing in response. It did make sense, and in some ways he couldn't blame Ginny for it. This whole mess was the fault of no one but the wizard who had cast the curse on him in the first place—or the whole lot of them who had attacked him, since their magic had combined with a relatively minor hex to render him infertile.

It still hurt like hell, though. He wanted to rage and scream and stomp his foot, and there was no way he could do that.

"D'you think Ginny is going to come back?" he asked then, the question he had told himself he wouldn't ask because it wasn't fair to Hermione, but which burst out of him anyway. "Once she gets past this notion that she has to have a child right away to celebrate being able to? Do you think she'll come back to me?"

Silence. Harry had thought Hermione would offer some sort of reassurance or explanation right away. It was what she did. He ended up opening his eyes to look at her.

Hermione just sat there staring at him. "I really don't know," she said.

Once again, Harry felt like he was falling, but this time, he thought it likely he would never land.


	3. Starfall

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Three—Starfall_

"I didn't really do it, you know."

Ginny's voice came from behind him. Harry had taken the day off work after Kingsley talked to him about yelling at people who had nothing to do with the case that had made him infertile. He sighed and rolled his head on his neck hard enough to pop a few things, then turned around.

"You didn't run off and sleep with someone to get pregnant?" he asked.

Ginny walked into the drawing room and sat down on the couch next to him, the same couch where Harry had held her while she cried at the news that they really couldn't have children. She sat a distance away from him, her head turned to the side. After the last fight they had had, though, Harry couldn't really blame her.

"No," she said. "When it came down to it, I discovered that one thing was missing." She turned and met Harry's eyes expectantly.

Harry had no idea what _could _be missing. Ginny had made it obvious that she wanted to sleep with someone, and she seemed to have a candidate in mind. "Love?" he finally asked, when the silence had stretched so long that it would be more uncomfortable to let it go on than to break it.

Ginny did a whole-body flinch. "No," she whispered. "Your consent, Harry. I want to know that my child is going to be loved, and brought into a home where it's loved."

"You said it," Harry said, and turned back to the paper. "Your child. Not mine."

There was a long pause. Ginny was fighting a battle, Harry knew, but he didn't know what the stakes were or what the outcome would be. She had made it clear that she cared more about the chance of having children right now than she did anything else. She probably _should _finish the battle and make her decision.

He was trying to pretend it didn't hurt him, and of course it did, it hurt like a shard of ice shoved into his lungs. But trying to hold her back or change her mind could hurt worse. He didn't want to fight constantly with Ginny. He wanted them to stand together and have love and support and find a way to overcome this.

"It could be ours," Ginny said. "Not many people would ever have to know that they weren't yours. The father would, of course, and my family. But not many other people."

Harry glanced at her sideways. "I don't want rumors circulating, though. Does the man you were planning to sleep with and ask to give you children look much like me?"

Such a deep blush overspread Ginny's cheeks that she looked fevered. She took a sheet of the paper that had escaped onto the floor and looked at it. "No."

"Well, then," said Harry, and snapped the _Prophet _straight.

This time, Ginny's hand tore straight through the paper, snatching it up and discarding handfuls of it on the floor. Harry stared at her, frankly shocked. He had never thought he would see her like that.

"We _have _to have children somehow," Ginny hissed. "This is the best way. We don't have to go into the Muggle world, we don't have to worry about our child not being magical, we don't have to wait to adopt one. We can have a baby as soon as we want one, and the child will be healthy and—"

"Not mine," said Harry firmly. "And apparently you want to sleep with someone who's going to look different enough from me that lots of people might get the idea that the kid isn't mine, either." He took a deep breath. "Listen, Ginny. I thought about this the other day, but not in time." He stopped himself from saying "in time to stop you from walking away." He had to be so careful. "Why don't we wait a bit? Maybe in time, I'll get used to the idea that I can't have children. Maybe one or both of us will lose this attachment to the idea that we have to have children of our blood." He knew it would be difficult for him to lose, but he thought he could. "Just—right now it's still too overwhelming."

"I want a baby."

"It can wait."

"I don't want to. I shouldn't have to."

"_Why_?" Fuck Hermione's theory, Harry was going to ask the question outright. "Why does it have to be _now_, when you were even discussing waiting until the next season was over? What happened?"

"This happened!" Ginny flung a hand at him. "I want a baby now, before someone finds out about the infertility and starts spreading rumors around! We can have at least one. We can have a _few_."

Harry stared at her. "You're worried about rumors, but you want to sleep with someone who looks really different from me."

Ginny shut her eyes and looked away. "I don't know if I can explain it. I don't know if I should have to. All right? All I know is I started thinking about all the chances that we've already missed, the babies we _could _have conceived years ago if we were working on it! And I don't want to take the chance that someone will curse me, too, or I'll be in some kind of flying accident and die. I want to have children."

_It was what Hermione said it was, after all._ Harry bit back the impulse to snap, given that. He swallowed deeply and nodded. "Okay. Okay. But if you want to quit the team for a while and stay at home, then you won't be in danger of getting cursed or dying in a broom accident. I can make enough to support both of us. In the meantime, we can think about it and work on it."

"I don't want to."

Harry felt as though a dragon had given him a dull blow to the chest with its tail. "What?" he whispered.

"I didn't want to do this." Tears were slipping down Ginny's cheeks. "I didn't want to choose between you and having children. But I want them _so badly_, Harry, and I really don't want to wait. I can walk out this door and be pregnant in a few hours. That's never going to happen with you. Never."

_Goddamn it. _Less than a month had passed since Yellowborn had walked into that room and told Harry what was the matter. He _ought _to have had more time to deal with it than this. He _needed _more time to deal with it than this.

Ginny ought to have given him that time.

"If you choose your children and whoever this man is you want to father them over me," he said, "fine. I'm moving out."

Ginny's mouth drooped open a little. "What?" She stood up and reached out to him, then clasped her hands back together against her chest.

"You heard me," Harry said. His teeth felt as if they would crack, he was pressing them together so hard. "You made your choice, and you can't stand staying here with me and trying to adopt or work out a solution so that you're not—you're not sleeping with someone else. Your children and having them now are more important than waiting. Well, waiting is important to _me._ Your life changed, but my fucking life changed too, Ginny!" His voice finally escaped his control, but Ginny wasn't frightened; she just went on staring at him. "I want to think about this and try to come to fucking _terms _with it instead of just having to jump into something new! So I'll move out." He turned and began Summoning his clothes and Auror robes and everything else he could think of from upstairs.

"You're not being reasonable," said Ginny. "You're talking like we're going to get a divorce right away."

"You want children right away," Harry said, spinning around to sneer at her. "Why not a divorce?"

Ginny tried to touch him. Harry avoided her. He was burning hot and bitter and _angry_. He'd been denying himself time to mourn, trying to be sensitive to everybody, Yellowborn and Ginny and Ron and Molly in case he put them in the middle of a divorce, and he hadn't been able to sit down and cry for long.

Now he felt he was about to. He was going to do it in private, though, away from someone who was already daydreaming about the man she was going to fuck and the children she was going to have.

"_Harry_."

"No." They were both being unreasonable and stubborn and wrong, maybe, but Harry was not going to sit around being the patient one in that situation. His clothes had come flying down the stairs by now, and it was a simple matter to Summon that old trunk he'd had with him so long ago, at the Dursleys'. He'd kept it for sentimental reasons, but it was useful now, as he stuffed his clothes in it and then shrank it and tucked it in his pocket.

"You need to calm down and listen to me." Ginny spoke as though she was going to restrain him simply by moving around in front of him and lifting one stern hand.

"You're the one who wants to walk away from me because I'm defective now and get pregnant right this minute." Harry glared at her. "Get out of my way."

"I never said that!"

"I could get pregnant in a few hours," Harry told her in a mocking voice. "I want to stare into someone's eyes and know that he loves me and—"

"This is horrible." Ginny's eyes were filled with tears again. Harry thought he had seen her cry more in the last month than in the entire five years of their marriage. Well, fine. _He _had felt more like shit in the last month than in the entire five years of their marriage. "You're horrible! I told you those things and they were real and sincere and only meant for your ears, and now you're throwing them back in my face?"

"I'm throwing them back in the face of the woman who chose having children over me," Harry said, barely holding onto his temper. "Get the fuck out of my way."

"We could still be a family if you would make the choice to love them!"

That was so ridiculous that Harry didn't know what to say. So he said nothing. And he didn't try to go to the Floo or the door, since Ginny was blocking him from both of them, and he didn't try to tear open the wards and Apparate, which would leave Ginny and anyone else in the house without defenses. He touched the emergency Portkey coiled around his throat instead, the one that was made to replace the upper button in any shirt he wore.

The flowing colors snatched him away and deposited him in his office. Harry wavered for a second on unsteady legs before he collapsed into his chair. Thank Merlin, it was the middle of the afternoon and most people had already left. Including Ron.

Harry flung a locking spell at the door, though, because it would be just his luck that someone would hear him and get curious, and then buried his head in his hands.

He didn't cry as much as he had thought he would. His shoulders heaved, and there were a few dry sobs. But the rage was worse than the sadness, burning up the sorrow like a forest fire devouring trees.

He sat there and let it pass through him, and when it got bad enough that he had to do something with it or go insane, he hurled the ornamental paperweight he'd got for finishing Auror training at the wall. He'd never liked the stupid thing, anyway.

* * *

"You look like hell. And Ginny said that you didn't come home last night."

Harry lifted one shoulder in a weary shrug. Ron had come into the office and stood studying him for some time from the doorway, while Harry slogged through paperwork and didn't look up. "So speaketh the trained investigator, right?"

"So speaketh the concerned best friend and brother-in-law, too." Ron walked over to his own desk and started rearranging his files with careless hands. He didn't take his eyes off Harry.

Harry held back the jolt that came from hearing those last words, and swallowed. "Well, you might not be that much longer."

"Which one?" Ron gave up on pretending to pay attention to the files and turned to look at Harry. "The best friend or the brother-in-law?"

"Ginny and I are getting a divorce. And I'm not sure that you want to stay my best friend now that you've heard that."

Ron looked down at the floor and clenched his jaw. Harry waited. It seemed to take a long time for the words to creep up Ron's throat, but then, he finally shook his head and spoke.

"I don't think you did anything deliberately to hurt Ginny. She wants children, and you can't have them. That's it, isn't it?"

Harry frowned. He wondered for a moment if Hermione had mentioned their conversation to Ron, but he didn't think so. Ron had probably just figured it out based on what he knew about Ginny and the hex that had hit Harry. "Yes. Basically."

"Then that makes it sad." Ron's throat worked, and he turned away as though he couldn't look at Harry any longer, sitting down behind his desk. "But not anyone's fault."

Harry was quiet. He wanted to believe Ron, that the rest of the Weasleys would think the same thing and not exile him completely from their family, but Ginny was their daughter and their sister. Harry would expect them to choose her over him. They couldn't give up on being related to her because her marriage to Harry didn't work out.

The way he sometimes did when it was really important, Ron heard his thoughts and answered them without being a Legilimens. "We can't give up on you being my best friend, either. Unless you're going to walk away from me now, because you're afraid of what I might do in the future."

Harry stood up and walked over to him. Ron still hunched at his desk as though he was uncertain, so Harry clapped him on the shoulder, and made Ron look at him. "No," he said quietly. "I might have to stop coming over to the Burrow for a while, or to your house, but I'm going to be right here."

Ron exhaled shakily and reached up for one second, catching Harry's hand in a grip so firm that it left bruises on his wrist. Then he turned around and picked up the file in front of him. "Good, because we have a case to work on."

Harry smiled.

* * *

"You know I don't mind if you stay here, Harry." Dean's voice was soft, and he held open his door to Harry. "Better than staying in the Leaky Cauldron or sleeping in your office anyway. You know, the way Ron said you did last night?" There was a sharp edge to his voice there.

"Well, I _was _going to get a room in the Leaky Cauldron," Harry said mildly, looking around the drawing room that Dean had ushered him into. It had enormous walls, bare except for a huge painting in the middle of each one. The painting directly in front of Harry was a seascape with waves crashing on the rocks in the foreground, and things that might have been dolphins or whales leaping in the background. The one over to the side had lots of hot colors, red and gold.

Dean didn't give him time to work out what it was or look at the rest. He walked around in front of Harry and scowled at him. "When were you going to tell me and Seamus and Neville what was going on with you and Ginny?"

"Er, well," said Harry, and spent some time scratching the back of his neck and walking over to look at the red and gold painting on the wall. "Did you paint this? It's really good. Is it the Gryffindor common room?"

"It's a rose the way a bee might see it," said Dean, and shook his head. "You're not going to get me off-track. I know you weren't planning to meet us there and talk about Ginny and whatever is happening between you, but I need to know."

Harry sighed. He had been out with Ron, and Seamus and Neville and Dean had showed up unexpectedly to celebrate Dean selling a painting to a rich patron. They'd joined him and Ron without waiting for an invitation. Apparently they'd overheard more than Harry meant them to first, or at least Dean had.

"I found out about a month ago that I couldn't have children," he said. Make it as blunt as possible and get this over with. "A curse hit me and combined with other curses, and there's no chance of reversing it now."

"Jesus, mate," said Dean, one hand going out as though he was going to touch Harry's shoulder. He hesitated, letting it hover in the air. Harry sighed and clasped his hand. Dean shook his head. "What an awful thing."

Harry nodded. "It hit—I mean, Ginny and I were planning on starting a family soon, you know? And it hit her hard when she figured out that she wouldn't have my children."

"But there are so many ways around that," said Dean, with what Harry knew now was the enviable certainty of someone raised in the Muggle world. "You could ask about artificial insemination, or adopt a child, or see if there's a Muggleborn who's being mistreated by their family—"

"I didn't even think about that last one," Harry admitted. Since the war, there were better mechanisms and spells in place to track children and figure out if anyone Muggleborn had been mistreated by their parents since their accidental magic started to show itself. Harry had been instrumental in helping McGonagall set those up at Hogwarts. "But Ginny doesn't want artificial insemination. She wants to know who the father is. And she wants—well, both of us want a blood child more than an adopted one."

Dean stared at him. "Even though you can't have one?"

"Ginny still could." Harry rubbed his face, then took off his glasses to clean them. Just talking about this was making him tired all over again. "That's what our fight was about. She wants to have a child with someone else. I don't want her to."

"Well, you're still _married_," said Dean. He went into his kitchen and came back with a can of Muggle beer, raising it in silent invitation. Harry nodded and accepted it gratefully, popping it open and drinking what felt like half in one gulp. "You don't think that you're going to get back together?"

"No." Harry sank down on Dean's couch, where he could see the rose painting. "If you still fancy her…"

"That was a long time ago," said Dean, his voice neutral. He sat down on the couch across from Harry, beneath the rose painting. "Besides, I'm not sure that I want to sleep with her if all she's interested in is my sperm."

"Point." Harry sighed and shut his eyes. He was still trying to be fair to Ginny, but it was nice to be talking to someone who wasn't a Weasley by blood or marriage, and wouldn't expect him to be completely fair all the time. "I keep thinking that we could work things out if we'd just _waited_. But she wants a kid now."

"Hmmm," said Dean, and drank most of his own beer.

"And I can kind of understand it, and I kind of blame her." Harry drank some more and decided that he didn't really want to talk about Ginny after all. "Are you sure that me staying here is no problem? I mean, I can pay you all the Galleons you want—"

"I'd prefer Muggle money." Dean grinned at him. "A lot of my clients are Muggles. Less to explain when they come into the flat if I don't have gold lying around. And there's no problem. I took this place because it had a room I wanted to use as a studio, but the light isn't nearly as good as I thought it was. Feel free to use that room. If I want it back, I'll let you know."

"Thanks, Dean," said Harry, and choked down a hiccough. That would be too embarrassing, show that he was drinking that much already. "You're a mate."

"I'd do it for a lot of people," said Dean, and gave Harry what Harry thought was a compassionate look, although by closing his eyes, he managed to avoid seeing it. "And you sound like you're in a lot of trouble."

"Not _that _much," Harry said, and wrapped a hand around his eyes. "I just wasn't expecting this, and I have to spend some time over the next few days moving things out and reckoning out how much in the vaults is mine. Or which vaults." He and Ginny had established a new, joint vault when they married, but Harry had kept some money back, with the vague intention of using it for their kids' Hogwarts schooling someday.

Thinking about that now was like a blow to the throat.

But he would have to think about lots of other things and get used to them, and he was determined to change the subject instead of dwelling on his own problems all the time. "So tell me about your paintings and what you've sold recently."

Dean opened his mouth, caught Harry's eye, and seemed to realize that now would be the wrong time to press. He cleared his throat. "Well, that rose-painting you were admiring? I've sold a copy of it to someone who wants to keep secret, but I can tell his name to a _real _friend…"

Harry listened to Dean for the rest of the evening, managing to enjoy the fact that one of his friends was prospering even if he wasn't. And he could laugh and love and be happy with the rest of them, he thought, as long as he thought about his friends' success and didn't concentrate on his own _lack _of success. It was important to him, but it couldn't be the consuming importance of his life. He would have to learn to rise above it.

* * *

Still, that night, as he lay in Dean's spare bedroom and listened to Dean's comfortable snoring from down the corridor, the thought of it returned full force, clawing at the inside of Harry's skull and skin until he felt that he'd like to explode out of both of them.

Harry shivered and laid an arm carefully over his eyes. He was a little drunk, but not enough to think that leaving Dean's house and going flying, the way that he usually did when he was this upset, was a good idea. He would probably crash the broom into something, and besides, this was a Muggle neighborhood.

But he had to have _some _outlet. And that was what finally made him stand up and go searching in the little trunk he'd left, tossing robes around until he found one that was weighed down by the extra bulk in one pocket. He pulled out the flat journal and stared at it.

Hermione had given it to him a year ago, saying that she thought writing down some of the thoughts and emotions he battled would help him. The same day, a stone propelled by a curse had failed to damage Harry as thoroughly as it could have because the journal was in his pocket. He had carried it since then, to honor Hermione and the luck she'd given him, but he'd never seriously considered using it. Only Ginny had a better reason than he did to be wary of diaries.

_Ginny_.

The tide of grief came back, and Harry tore open the cover of the journal and groped for a quill, finding one finally in the bottom of his trunk.

He had to have some escape, or he was going to go mad. He couldn't have a Time-Turner. He couldn't make it never have happened with a wish. But he _wanted _to be someone it had never happened to.

More than anything, he wanted to be normal. He wanted his parents back. He wanted the war not to have happened. He wanted a wife and a family and friends who adored him, and even though he had the last, all the rest was aching like a wound in the back of his head now.

Maybe he could never have that. But he could _create _someone who did.

So he scribbled on the first page of the journal, _My name is Ethan Starfall, and I have three children and a wife who loves me and parents named Isidora and Julian who love me._

Harry's breathing slowed. He found his eyelids drooping, as if the words were a draught of Dreamless Sleep. He dropped the journal back in his trunk and curled up in his bed, sighing as sleep came sweeping towards him.

* * *

That was how it began.


	4. Ethan

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Four—Ethan_

Kingsley's voice was very gentle, but in that way that meant it would get sharp later if Harry didn't pay attention. "Harry? Are you listening?"

Harry sighed and lifted his gaze from the table in front of him to focus on Kingsley. "Yes, I am," he said. "McCann has been arrested twice, but managed to slip away from us each time. You think someone has been losing evidence on purpose. That means that we have suspect someone in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement and be careful about what we share with whom."

Kingsley went on watching him. Harry looked stoically back. He was dealing better with things now, since he had moved in with Dean and heard messages from the Weasley family that they didn't plan to turn their backs on him despite the divorce, but he wasn't going to play the pretend game of how he was perfectly fine.

Kingsley finally grunted. "A good summary," he said, and tapped his wand against the parchment in front of him. A photograph of Reynold McCann appeared on the wall, blown up to gigantic size, like a Muggle projection. "Now, remember, McCann is an expert dueler. We think that one of his connections might be to an old classmate or teacher in the Department, but given how many people have that kind of training…"

Harry stifled another sigh and studied McCann. He was so distinctive in his features—hair even more orange than Ron's, a huge scar on the left side of his face, and almost-gold hazel eyes—that he would probably be going about under a glamour anyway, which made everything all the harder.

Harry knew McCann was dangerous. He knew that he and Ron would be assigned to this case because they were one of the most effective partner teams when it came to keeping each other from being injured.

_But not hexed._

The last thing he wanted to do was start blaming Ron for the hex that had made him infertile, though, and Harry ruthlessly put the thought away and went back to listening to Kingsley. He could do this. He still wanted to be an Auror, although Kingsley himself had advised Harry to take some time off, or at least temporarily switch to a different partner other than Ron, when he had thought there would be some nastiness about the divorce.

But this was what came nearest to normal in Harry's life right now, and he didn't want to lose it. He listened.

* * *

The other part of the reason he was coping, and didn't break down when Ginny sent him a letter asking him to reconsider the divorce, was the journal that he had begun keeping as Ethan Starfall.

Harry had never thought he was a good storyteller or anything, mostly because he had never tried. But the details of Ethan's life were just there when he reached for them, the details that came from his own deepest desires.

His parents were Isidora and Julian Starfall, the way that Harry had come up with the names on that first night, but the more Harry wrote about them, the more he came to believe in them. They weren't perfect. They fought sometimes. But Isidora was the sort of witch who came up with charms to cast on her not-perfectly-cooked food to make it taste better, and comforted Ethan when he was sick, and doted on her grandchildren. And Julian was the sort of wizard who would have fought to protect his children if he had to, but he didn't have to; he grew herbs that were of use to apothecaries instead, and peacefully sold them. His hands always smelled like dirt and weeds.

Writing about Ethan's children was equally as easy. Harry knew without thinking about it that their names were James, Albus, and Lily—names that he thought he probably couldn't have got Ginny to agree to in reality, but this wasn't reality. James was nearing the age when he would go to Hogwarts, because Ethan was older than Harry, and he had red hair and a reckless grin. And Al had inherited Ethan's poor sight and hazel eyes, and he worried a lot about what other people thought of him. Lily was lazy and spoiled and sweet; she just smiled to get her way, instead of throwing a tantrum. Most people gave in to her.

It was when he had to talk about Ethan's wife, Anne, that Harry hesitated, and wanted to backtrack. Did he really need to talk about her at all? Ethan was the sort of wizard who—

Who adored his wife, and would talk about her constantly. And being married was an important part of that normal life that Harry wanted for himself. Having a divorce wasn't.

He knew it was fiction. That was the important part, that it _was _fiction. It was different from reality, and helped him hide from it, a little. Sometimes, when he stood up from writing down a description of Ethan playing with his children or watching fireworks with his wife, he wondered if he could really go through the divorce with Ginny. There was his last chance at a normal life in reality slipping through the cracks.

But what he and Ginny had said to each other wasn't normal. That _rage _wasn't normal. The grief was, but they hadn't managed it well together. Harry wanted a divorce so that he could recuperate at a distance and think about it later, and hopefully be friends with Ginny as well as the rest of the Weasleys someday, and maybe not be so bitter about it when he heard Ginny was pregnant.

So he told Ginny he wanted a divorce, and flung himself into the McCann case whenever he was around Ron, and left Ethan at home. His name might literally mean that a star had fallen, but that was in Harry's life, not his.

* * *

"Out with it." Harry put down his fork and leaned commandingly forwards to look into Hermione's eyes.

"What?" Hermione lifted one hand and stared at him. "What are you talking about?"

"You've been giving Ron those sideways looks that you think I don't notice and hemming and hawing around something for days now," said Harry firmly. They were seated in Ron and Hermione's back garden, because it was a fine, cool night, and Hermione was pointing out stars to them that she said centaurs had different names for. "I told myself I was going to talk to you about it tonight. So I am."

Hermione bit her lip and lowered her plate to the grass, as if this wasn't an announcement that she could make while holding it. Ron put an arm around her shoulders and glanced at Harry gravely.

For a second, Harry was afraid they were going to tell him that they were supporting Ginny's side in the divorce, and his slowly pounding heart seemed to consume the universe. But then Hermione said, "I'm pregnant. And we didn't know how to tell you."

Harry swallowed, carefully, but his heartbeat slowed down. Then he said, "Well. Congratulations. I want—I mean, I wish I had a child on the way to play with him or her, but I can't not congratulate you."

Hermione's smile was slow, as if checking that he meant it, but luminous when it did finally come. She nodded and reached out a hand to Harry. He went with it, clasping her hand firmly enough that she finally seemed to believe him. "Thank you," she whispered. "It would have hurt to think that we couldn't share this with you."

Ron still had his arm around Hermione's shoulders, but he reached out to touch Harry's wrist in the hand Hermione was holding. "You're going to be named godfather," he said. "I hope you realize that. We wouldn't think of having anyone else."

Harry nodded. "I know that." He sat there for a few seconds, holding onto his friends, envisioning the way their kid would look. Who knew if it would be a boy or a girl, but Harry saw a girl with Hermione's wrinkled forehead poring over a book, a boy with Ron's red hair, a girl with brown frizzy hair, a boy riding a broom and laughing.

When his friends finally let him go, Harry felt more settled and calm. Not everything was disintegrating, and if he couldn't have children of his own, then he would have to learn to be a good uncle and godfather.

It wasn't perfect. He didn't feel at all like it was right now. But he would get used to it.

_The same way I could have got used to Ginny wanting to have a child if she had just waited and _talked _to me about it…_

But that line of thinking would only make Harry bitter in a way he was trying to learn not to be. He stopped it as firmly as he could, and picked up his glass.

"So what names are you thinking about?" he asked, and unwittingly sparked a long and bitter fight that made him forget all about his own bitterness, in laughing at the bickering of his two best friends.

* * *

Ethan was quiet in Harry's head most of the time. He knew he had to raise walls between his day life and his fantasy life. His fantasy life was there to help him cope. He didn't think that any of his friends would really make life difficult for him if they found out that he was writing in this journal, but it would be embarrassing, and hard to explain.

So he worked. And then he came home and wrote of comfortable arguments with Anne, of the way that Ethan's children played around him, of the way that Ethan himself made a living as a supplier of utterly tame and insignificant magical creatures, like flobberworms, for Potions ingredients. Anne was the Auror, the one with an exciting and dangerous life. Ethan was the one who stayed home with the children and got to enjoy them all the time.

He hadn't been in Britain during the war, because his parents had gone abroad the minute they realized how dangerous things were getting and had taken him with them. Ethan had lived in Spain, and could speak some Spanish, which Harry looked up and learned. He had come back to Britain after the war and lived in quiet contentment, without scars, without nightmares.

Everything in his life was very boring and quiet, but sunny and vivid, with the colors that Harry thought would come from a garden in the height of summer. The words slipped out of his quill more and more easily the more he practiced, although he had never done this before. Of course, he'd never had a need like this to do it before.

_Today Anne said that we hadn't been spending enough time together. So we went outside and had a little picnic in the garden near a stand of the flowers that Father planted for me. He said that they would grow into champion potions ingredients, but I'm afraid that I've never tested that. I don't know that much about plants compared to animals, anyway. I only know that there were purple flowers on it, and they smelled sweet when Anne plucked them off and threw them at me because I teased her about letting McCann get away._

Harry paused when he realized that name had showed up, and carefully scratched it out, turning it into _Maudsley_. He was determined that nothing of reality would intrude here. Next thing he knew, he might start talking as though he was Ethan Starfall in daily life.

And he wasn't. He couldn't be. Not without a wife and children. Not without parents. Not without that blessed and sunny past that Ethan lived in and swam in, like a fish through water, while at the same time never taking it for granted, because he had seen how other, less happy people lived.

Harry shut the journal and put it away for the night, and went to bed to dream of happiness.

* * *

"Do you really dare to confront me, Potter?"

Harry moved forwards, unhurried. He and Ron had finally tracked Reynold McCann down, in a house that belonged to one of the brothers of an Auror Hendred. Kingsley's suspicions had been right, and McCann had escaped capture so far because he was being tipped off by an Auror who had once trained with him in dueling classes and was fond of him. That was Hendred, arrested earlier this evening.

Now Harry and Ron just had to bring McCann in, and they could consider this case officially over and done with.

"I don't know why I wouldn't dare," Harry said, his eyes carefully traveling around the dusty room. It was probably the drawing room, but the house had been abandoned for years and they'd covered all the furniture, making it hard to be sure. There was a bowl of dried fruit and nuts McCann had been eating on one table, and footprints in the dust winding back and forth. "You don't have your wand." Ron had Disarmed him on the stairs, right before McCann ran in here and Harry followed, and a trapped door had fallen into the frame between the two rooms.

"But what other traps might I not have?" McCann was backing up, trying to lead Harry towards what was probably a couch, grinning all the while. "You should think of that, and think of whether you dare to confront me until you know everything about the house!"

Harry didn't waste breath on a reply. He knew one such trap was probably near the couch, because McCann kept trying to lead him in that direction, and he wasn't even being _subtle _about it.

On the other hand, Harry didn't think he had to move, not when he could set up a trap of his own.

He cast a non-verbal Throwing Charm on the bowl of fruit and nuts, and it flew through the air towards the back of McCann's head. He spun around at the faint whistling noise. All that meant was that the bowl hit him in the face instead of the back of the head, and he went down heavily, his skull bouncing off the cushions of the couch.

"You need to think about unexpected traps, too," Harry told him, and then bound and Stunned him, floating him back towards the door between the two rooms. Whatever other traps might be here, he would leave them to the members of the Department who would be conducting the official corruption investigation. Auror Hendred, or her brother, might have helped other criminals slip away; the existence of a conveniently abandoned and booby-trapped house suggested that, at least.

The door dissolved just as he got there, under the pressure of an Acid Curse. Ron stumbled through, swearing.

"The spells on that thing would have worked at Gringotts," he muttered, and then stopped when he saw McCann floating on the air behind Harry. "You got him?"

Harry nodded, and smiled at Ron. "He won't get away this time. He implied there were traps in this room, too, though, so I'd rather get out of here and let the Hit Wizards come back and figure out what's what."

"Good," said Ron, and glanced around at the empty, silent house, shuddering. "I don't want to spend any more time here than I have to."

Harry thought about teasing him about the presence of spiders, but Ron had probably already thought of that on his own, and a joke was always less funny when you were the second one telling it. They took McCann in.

Only later that evening, when he and Dean were watching the telly and Dean was telling him furiously about how his favorite football team had only lost their last game because the other team had cheated, did Harry realize something. He had focused on the case and McCann until the end, and hadn't thought about Ginny and his lost children at all.

It didn't mean the pain was gone. But it meant that the pain was no longer the center of his life, and that some of the things he was doing to try to handle it were working.

Harry hid his smile behind his next beer.

* * *

Ethan knew a lot about children and animals and love, but it was all small knowledge. He didn't know about the horrible, painful things that Harry did. He had never heard of Horcruxes. He would stare if someone asked him about the Sword of Gryffindor or the defenses at Gringotts. He kind of assumed that the grand people were all somewhere else, living their own lives, and would leave the ordinary wizards like him to take care of themselves.

Harry drowned himself in that life, in that life he wished he could live, in that life he wished he'd been left to live.

_Mother asked me today if I thought that Al had been spending rather too much time by himself. I told her that I didn't think he had, but that I'd look into it. And I found Al sitting with his legs kicking on the edge of the wall at the back of the garden and frowning at nothing, and I began to think Mother had been right._

_I asked him what was wrong. Al didn't answer for a long time, and then he turned and looked up at me._

"_Why did you name me Albus?" he asked. "James and Lily are just normal names, but I have to go by a nickname because Albus is so unusual. The only thing people want to ask me when they hear my name is whether I was named after Albus Dumbledore, and I don't even know how to answer them, because you never told me why._"

_I couldn't believe that we'd neglected to give him the answer for so long. I took his hand and said, "You were named after Dumbledore, in a way. We left the country during the war, you know, Grandmother and Grandfather and myself." Al nodded, because he knows that. I told them that story early on, because so many other families had war stories, and they deserved to know why we didn't have any. "But my parents heard about Albus Dumbledore and how brave he was and the sacrifices they made. They hoped they would have another child and they could name him Albus, but they never did. So I decided to name you that._"

_Al sat there and thought for a long time. I hoped he wasn't too offended about being named after a dead person, but finally he sat up and said, "Yeah, that makes sense. Thanks, Dad." And he went back to the house, and a while later I saw him flying._

_I hope that my relationships with my children are always that gentle and easy. I know they can't always be, especially because all of them will be teenagers at the same time, but right now, it seems like they will be._

Harry slept hard after that, and his mind was filled with images of a life that he wasn't living, but one he could make up.

* * *

Ginny came up to him on the day they were supposed to meet with the solicitor to sign the divorce papers, and asked quietly, "Can I talk to you?"

"Of course," said Harry. "That's what we're here for, isn't it?" He followed her into one of the little anterooms that the solicitor had set aside in her house. Harry thought that giving couples privacy to talk was probably one of the purposes of those anterooms. This one, at least, was pretty, with some stones set on the wall in the shape of a peacock's tail and a spell that made an illusion of water flow down from under them.

"Don't be cruel," said Ginny, and she faced him with her hands clenched in front of her. "I'm asking you one more time to think about the divorce. To—not go through with it. You were right. I was acting irrationally because the—the hex was so sudden. But if I'd had more time to think about it, I would agree with you. Let's give it a few years. Maybe we can come around to the idea of adoption."

Harry thought about that. He knew that two months ago, when he was still swaying back and forth between pain and rage, he would have leaped at the chance. At least that meant Ginny had reconsidered, and the pig-headed way she had insisted that of course she was right had been the one thing Harry hated the most.

But now, with the curse three months behind him and the image of the marriage he wanted in the journal he was keeping as Ethan…

Harry carefully put the thought of Ethan away—he would never think it in front of anyone who was part of his real life—and asked, "What does it mean to you, that I got cursed and the first thing we leaped to was thinking that it was horrible if we didn't have blood children? And that we yelled at each other and insulted each other?"

Ginny blinked. "That we were under a lot of stress?"

"We were," said Harry. "But you were irrational, and you went on acting that way. And then I wanted a divorce over something that should have been handled other ways, probably." He saw the protest rising in Ginny's eyes, and spoke on before she could continue. "We both didn't trust each other. We both leaped too quickly into anger. We both—Ginny, our marriage wasn't strong. I want a strong marriage. We didn't have one."

"We _did!_ We loved each other! We were married for five years!"

"And all it took to undo that was the thought that we couldn't have children." Harry had to turn away and look at the wall. He wasn't as calm as he wanted to be. The rage was clogging his throat, making it hurt, but on the other hand, he knew what he wanted to say this time. "I think we married each other thinking we would have kids together. We _had _to have kids together, or it wasn't a real marriage. And we didn't care enough about each other to stay together despite that."

"I still want children. But I could get along with adopted children." Ginny's words were cold, though, and Harry noticed she hadn't stepped forwards to put a hand on his shoulder the way she might have at the beginning of the conversation. "That's what I'm telling you. That I know I acted irrationally, and I'm sorry, and this is a second chance."

"I was irrational, and I was weak, and I'm not sorry," said Harry, looking at her now. "Because it wasn't enough."

Ginny folded her shoulders up. "I'm willing to wait for children! What else do I need to do?"

"_Listen _to me?" Harry snapped, his own anger rising again. "Because I'm saying that it's not enough! We might have to wait years to have children, for me to be comfortable with the idea, and even if you acknowledge that you don't have to have children right now, would you be willing to wait for years?"

The sharp turn of Ginny's head gave him her answer.

Harry nodded, and tried to make his voice softer. "I'm sorry, Ginny. This is—I just want something different, that's all. It's hard on both of us, but I want to have some time alone and think. I just don't want to share this right now."

"So it's selfish as well."

"Yeah," Harry said, and now the rage was running backwards and turning into sadness. "Yeah, I reckon you could say that."

Ginny walked away from him and into the solicitor's office. Harry followed her, shaking his head. Maybe the only marriage he could have was an imaginary one, because he might not ever find someone he loved who would also accept that they couldn't have their own children.

But he knew he wanted more than a marriage that collapsed at the first real challenge. Whether it was weakness in him, or Ginny, or both of them together, or just too much stress, or something else, he didn't really care anymore. His decision to divorce had been quick, but it didn't mean it was the wrong one. He wanted out of this marriage, and into the freedom to—

Think, and heal, and withdraw, and mourn, and do his best to accept.


	5. A Desperate Letter

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Five—A Desperate Letter_

"I don't _want _to!"

Draco nearly didn't manage to duck the full inkwell that Scorpius hurled at his head. He cast a hasty spell that caught it in midflight and sent the inkwell back to the desk instead of shattering, but by the time he turned around from casting it, Scorpius had got out of his chair. He was smearing his ink-blackened hands all over the tablecloth, too.

"Scorpius," Draco began, anger rumbling in his gut, but Scorpius turned and ran out of the room.

Draco sat down in the chair Scorpius had been trying to learn to write at, staring sightlessly at the parchment. Scorpius had written a few blobby letters before he ran away. He could do well, Draco knew that. In the days before Draco had divorced Astoria, Scorpius had written out his name and Draco's name and the names of several of his ancestors.

But now Astoria was gone, living on the Continent and pursuing a demanding job that meant she was only able to come and see Scorpius occasionally. She and Draco had agreed that of course Scorpius should stay here; he was the Malfoy heir, and he should be raised appropriately. Astoria could have afforded house-elves with the handsome settlement Draco had given her, but house-elves were no substitute for parents.

Scorpius, though, had taken the divorce a lot harder than Draco had thought he would. It made sense for his parents. They were both bored with each other, and when Astoria had confessed her desire to do magical research on an invention that might replace the Muggle-based Hogwarts Express, Draco had proposed separating. That was agreeable to her.

_I never knew that he would miss Astoria so much, _Draco thought, and stood up to go find Scorpius.

He found him on the grand staircase, prancing up and down and trying to rub the rest of the ink on his fingers against the wallpaper. He stopped when he saw Draco. Draco held back a snort. Scorpius wasn't succeeding anyway, since the ink had dried too much by now.

"You need a bath," Draco told him. He tried to make his voice nice, the way Astoria had told him he should do, but it was impossible. Scorpius just stood there looking more and more mutinous, and that made it hard for Draco to control his temper, too. "You need to get that ink off your fingers. You want to look nice for dinner, don't you? Uncle Blaise is coming over."

Scorpius adored Blaise, but at the moment, he looked as though he would have rather been eaten by wild horses than admit it. "No!"

"No, you don't want to look nice?" Draco tried to raise his eyebrows and look imposing and non-threatening at the same time. He hadn't mastered his father's trick of raising his eyebrows and conveying disappointment with just a head-tilt yet. "Then I'm sure Uncle Blaise will be very disappointed."

Most of the time, that worked on Scorpius, even now that Astoria was gone, but now, it only made tears fill his eyes. He turned and pounded his way up the stairs, yelling, "No!" at every step. A few seconds later, Draco heard the door of his room slam.

Draco sighed and sat down on the lowest step, since there was no one there to see him—except Izzy, the house-elf who appeared a few seconds later, bowing low enough to brush her ears against the floor. "Izzy is to be going and seeing about the young master Malfoy?" she asked, voice shrill enough to hurt Draco's ears.

"Yes," said Draco reluctantly. He really didn't want to spoil Scorpius by sending house-elves to him when he was upset. Scorpius had had them bring him snacks in the past, and toys, and all sorts of other things that evaded the punishments Draco had set, unless Draco specifically remembered to tell the house-elves not to cater to Scorpius. "Just make sure that he hasn't hurt himself or broken anything."

Izzy gave him a grave look and vanished. Draco scowled. It was the same look the elves were always going him when he talked about broken objects, as if they thought Draco should place his son above objects.

And Draco _did, _but it was also true that one of Scorpius's favorite games when he was angry was breaking heirlooms and delicate things and refusing to apologize. If the elves discovered something broken, they came squeaking to him in distress anyway. Draco just got out in front of Scorpius's destructive tendencies by giving them orders about them first.

Izzy's expression lingered with him anyway. Draco stood up and walked rapidly in the direction of his study. It was nearly dinner-time, and he needed a drink to calm down.

* * *

By dinner-time itself, Scorpius had flung a clock at the head of the house-elf who came to tell him it was time to eat, tried to tear his curtains down and forced Izzy to repair them, and screamed through the door at Draco when Draco reminded him that Uncle Blaise would be here soon. Draco told the house-elves to take up a reasonable meal and clean up any food Scorpius dropped on the floor or dishes he broke, and then went to meet with Blaise.

In a way, it was a relief to have only adult conversation at the dining table, but Draco was brooding on Scorpius all the time, and not good company. Blaise noticed it, but manfully kept up the flow of small talk by chattering about the endless details of his mother's latest wedding, until Draco's fifth sigh, when he seemed to lose his temper.

"You need help to deal with that brat," Blaise said, setting aside his fork and plate and giving Draco his full attention. Draco looked listlessly at Blaise's plate. He had lost track of what they were eating. Duck, it looked like.

"Don't call Scorpius a brat," Draco said automatically. Lucius had done it last week, which was why Draco was in the middle of the not-talking-to-his-parents cycle, which happened regularly between them.

"I'll call him what he is," said Blaise. "I can understand that he's upset about losing his mum, but there's a point where a kid crosses the line. I was upset about losing my dad. My mum still told me I was being a brat. I didn't have to attend her next wedding, but I did have to not break every single thing in my rooms in revenge."

"He doesn't break _every single _thing," Draco said, but lifted his hand when Blaise gave him a pointed look. "Right, right, I know. But what can I do? My parents want to take him off my hands and raise him themselves. They say I'm not doing it right, and that you can't raise a Malfoy this way. But I—I don't want to let him go. I love him that much."

He whispered the last words, not sure that Blaise wouldn't roast him alive for them, but Blaise leaned back in his chair with that easy grace he had and sighed towards the ceiling. "Then you find someone else. Couldn't you hire a nanny?"

Draco wrinkled his nose. He knew that some of his ancestors had had nannies for their children, but that was only before they had been able to afford house-elves. "No. I don't want to leave the task of raising him to someone else."

"I thought that was what we were discussing," said Blaise, but subsided when Draco glared at him. "Yes, I understand the difference."

"Then be serious for a second." Draco placed one hand on his forehead and looked off to the side, where the dancing lights of the candles on the table wouldn't hurt his eyes. "No nannies. No one who would live here and help me raise him."

He fell silent, though, thinking, because that was basically what Astoria had done, and things had started to go wrong with Scorpius when she left. Maybe Scorpius did need two parents, and not only one, no matter how steeped in the Malfoys traditions that one was. But where was Draco going to find someone else who wanted to marry him and who wouldn't bore him?

"You could write to the _Prophet _and ask for advice that way," Blaise suggested. "I understand they have people whose whole job is to tell other people what they should do with their lives."

Draco snorted bitterly. "Do you realize how many stories about my divorce the _Prophet _carried? I wouldn't have a chance of remaining anonymous. Even if they published my letter anonymously, someone would link the stories together with my letter, and I don't want Scorpius to be subject to rumors."

"Kidnap a concubine. Only, instead of having sex with you, they have to deal with that hellion. They'll probably be begging to have sex with you in a week."

Draco dropped his hand and glared at Blaise again. "Serious, I know," Blaise said, before Draco could say anything. He shrugged and drank off the rest of his glass of champagne. "That's the best advice I can offer you. Hire someone to help you deal with him, write letters to get help, or read some books. And you already rejected books."

"No, I didn't, because you didn't say anything about it before." Draco found himself sitting up, his muscles quivering with delight. "That's an _idea. _I can go to Flourish and Blotts, and choose books on parenting." He did have to hesitate for a second, wondering if he would have the same problem with choosing books on parenting that he would writing to the _Prophet _for advice about it, but then shook his head decisively. If worst came to worst, he would always _Obliviate _the clerk. "Blaise, you're a genius."

"I'm going to treasure this Pensieve memory for the rest of my life," Blaise said, holding up his champagne glass.

Draco ignored him, and started composing a list of subjects he wanted to look for in his head. It had been years since he was inside the bookshop; he and Astoria had ordered everything they wanted by owl. But he knew he couldn't entrust a task this delicate to anyone else. He would have to go and see what was there.

* * *

"Are you looking for something specific?"

This clerk was the fifth person who had approached him with some well-meaning but vacant question, and Draco clenched his teeth. He went on staring at the shelves as if he hadn't heard, then turned roughly when the clerk began to repeat himself. "_No_. I know that you're trying to keep customers, but trust me, I'll ask you if I want help, all right? And I'm not going to leave without buying something."

The clerk retreated, glaring at him. Draco ignored that. He would much rather take the risk of angering a few people in Flourish and Blotts than let word get out that Draco Malfoy was looking up parenting advice so soon after he had divorced. Perhaps he would disguise the covers of the books when he took them up to the counter, too.

So far, he had seen nothing that interested him. There were surprisingly few books on parenting wizarding children. Mostly, the books seemed to be tales that the authors thought children would like, like _Beedle the Bard, _and observations of Muggle children compiled by world travelers. Draco had picked up one book that promised advice on getting children to behave politely, but it turned out to be exclusively for the parents of Muggleborns.

Draco put the book down, shaking his head. He did notice the worn cover, and wondered idly if the author had ever thought to attribute its lack of success to the fact that few parents of Muggleborns would find the book here, in the _wizarding world._

By the time he had spent two hours in the shop, he was beginning to get desperate. He didn't want to come here and leave with nothing, and not only because he had promised the clerks he wouldn't. This was starting to seem like his last hope before he would have to give in and try one of Blaise's other, less sensible suggestions.

He did finally see a fat book that might do, and when he took it down, he felt a little surge of excitement. _Suggestions for Pure-Blood Family Life. _It was one that his father had once mentioned reading. It wouldn't have specific suggestions for how to raise a pure-blood heir after divorce, because divorce was still so rare among people of Draco's kind, but it would contain many suggestions for making such an heir accept his place in life.

Draco carried the book up to the counter. The smiling woman at the counter turned sour and pale when she saw him, and fussed over the book for longer than necessary. Draco thought he might actually leave the shop without her seeing it and questioning the title, she was so busy focusing on Draco's face.

Then she did happen to glance down at the book as she began to wrap it, and her fingers paused.

"What?" she whispered, looking up and into Draco's eyes. "So you lost your wife, and now you're going to put your son through the _heartless _training that this book recommends as well?" Her eyes were widening, and she had touched the counter as though she had some alarm spell there that would call out hidden assassins. "I won't let you!"

Her rising voice was attracting attention. Draco sighed and aimed his wand at her under the counter, quickly murmuring a Memory Charm. Her face relaxed into imbecility and confusion, and Draco rounded the counter and helped her sit down on the stool behind it. "Some kind of fit," he explained to the staring customers. "She'll be all right in a few minutes."

Most of them had already turned back to the shelves. Draco sneered under his breath. Some people persisted in hating him and his family, as this woman showed, but on the other hand, so many wizards were preoccupied with their own business since the war, not that many cared about him.

"What happened?"

Draco smiled and conjured a fan for the woman to hold, placing it in her hand. "I think you got overcome by the heat," he said. "It's very hot out today. And you came over all faint when you were wrapping up my book." Another quick wave of his wand finished the wrapping on the book himself. "Here's the coins."

The woman glanced back and forth between the package and the Galleons for a second. "Did the book really cost that much?" she asked doubtfully. "Did I—"

"Call it payment for the trouble that my face appears to have caused you," said Draco. She would forget the immediate occurrence, but it was asking for too much to hope that she would miraculously forget her hatred for Malfoys.

Her back straightened. "I don't want to overcharge even people I dislike."

"Think of it as the price for me clearing out quickly, then," Draco snapped, and picked up the book, and exited the shop. For Merlin's sake, people were divided between extreme ignoring of everything except their own concerns and then insistence on prying into what didn't concern them. Draco wasn't sure why he always seemed to run into the least convenient combination of the two.

He shook his head as he Apparated home. He had escaped without actual incident, and he had a book that promised to tell him what was wrong with Scorpius. He was about as happy as he could be, right now.

* * *

"_No!_"

Draco barely ducked the fork this time, and he didn't duck the plate of fish. It smashed into his head, and juices dripped down his face and slid into his ears and eyes. He cursed and flailed wildly at the plate, which flew across the room and broke into more pieces against the wall. A house-elf appeared, squeaking in distress, then vanished again when Draco stared at Scorpius.

Scorpius quieted as he looked at Draco, too, but his head went up, and that stubborn little line formed at the corner of his mouth. "I don't _like _fish," he said. "I'm not going to eat it. Not going, not going, not going—"

His voice was building up, and Draco cut in, hoping to avoid another temper. "That's fine, you don't have to eat the fish. I just served it because it's Grandfather's favorite fish, you know." One thing the book had suggested was putting the young pure-blood heir in touch with his ancestry by giving him food and toys and books that his ancestors had liked. So far, that was a failure with food that Draco and Narcissa had liked. Draco had hoped Lucius's tastes would match Scorpius's more closely.

From the way that Scorpius's eyes darkened, it wasn't working. "I want to eat biscuits," he said. "And chocolate. And milk and Muggle food and cheese and—"

Draco cringed at the "Muggle food," but tried to sound as calm as he could when he interrupted again. "You can have some of those things, some of the time. But you need to eat meat and fish and vegetables so that you can be strong and handsome. That's what you want, right? To be strong and handsome?"

"No," said Scorpius, and he was gasping in the way that meant he was near tears. "I want Mummy back!"

"She's not coming back," said Draco. He and Astoria had agreed on this from the beginning. Astoria said the same thing to Scorpius during her firecalls. Neither of them would ever lie to Scorpius or pretend that they were getting married again. "That's what you have to accept, Scorpius. She's happy where she is, and she wants you to be happy, too."

"Then she should _come back!_"

Scorpius shouted the last words, and Draco felt another drip of fish juice slide down his ear. He closed his eyes, his patience exhausted. "Go to your room, Scorpius," he said. "Izzy?" The house-elf appeared. "Escort Master Scorpius to his room, and then come back and clean up this mess, please."

Izzy looked at Draco so long and steadily that he thought she would disobey. House-elves could do that sometimes if they resented their owner's orders enough. Draco found himself holding his breath.

But in the end, Izzy turned away without doing it, and instead put a hand on Scorpius's wrist and escorted him towards his rooms, murmuring softly to him all the time. Draco didn't bother listening to what she said. He cast Cleaning Charms on himself and stared at the ruin of the dinner.

He had tried hard all day to play the games that Scorpius liked, and alternate those with activities that would give him a good sense of what it was like to be a Malfoy. They'd spent half an hour in the gallery where the portraits of past Malfoys hung, and they'd looked at albums that held photographs of the heirlooms, mostly locked up in the Gringotts vaults, that Scorpius would inherit someday. Draco had thought it was going well.

Then—this.

Draco stooped down, picked up a piece of plate shard, and tossed it against the wall after the rest of the plate, where it broke, violently. Then he turned and walked out of the room with as much dignity as he could muster.

* * *

That evening, sitting in front of the fire with a glass of the wine that had been the favorite of several of his ancestors, Draco found himself returning to one of Blaise's suggestions he had rejected in outrage at first.

Certainly, the thought of writing to the _Daily Prophet _and begging for advice was pathetic. Who knew whether the person who responded to him would even be a pure-blood, or have any experience raising children? Draco might get one of those pompous idiots who thought they knew better than parents precisely because they'd never been parents.

And he couldn't ask his mother and father. They had been against Draco and Astoria divorcing, even though it had been the best thing for the family in so many respects. Draco didn't want to listen to a lecture that would mostly consist of variations on, "I told you so."

But there were other routes he might seek advice by, and some of them were unexpected. Draco Summoned a book on post-owls from the library that he had read during the long days of his house arrest, awaiting trial, after the war, when the Aurors had cleared most of the interesting books from Malfoy Manor and left only the ones that not even the most suspicious bastard could qualify as Dark.

Yes. The section he had thought was most interesting, and so read over and over again, was the one that the book still automatically fell open at. It talked about the process of breeding post-owls and how the wizards who bred them had managed to instill some almost mystic qualities. The way an owl could find a wizard even if they didn't know their address. The way they could find even a Muggleborn student who had never been to Hogwarts and lived in the Muggle world.

The way that an owl could sometimes take a letter precisely to the person it needed to go to, if the writer's need was strong enough, even if the writer didn't know that that person existed.

Draco didn't think further. He Summoned ink and quill, and seized the parchment he already had on the desk beside him, and began to write.

_To whoever can help me,_

_Please help. I'm trying to raise my five-year-old son right after divorcing my wife, and although she sees him and talks to him regularly, my son is taking it very hard. He screams and breaks things, and won't eat food he needs to be healthy, and has regressed in his writing and learning abilities. I don't know how to raise him properly to be a pure-blood heir instead of the brat he's becoming. If you have a lot of experience raising children, then please inform me how to do it. If not, please pass the letter along to someone who does._

Draco hesitated, then signed it simply _M_. No point in embarrassing himself until he knew whether the letter would even get a reply.

Then he stood up and called for his owl, and sent the letter off before he could think better of it, telling the bird, "Take this to someone who can help me raise Scorpius."

For a second, the owl hesitated, and he feared it wouldn't work. Then the bird gave a single excited hoot and shot away, heading straight and true for the horizon.

Draco gave a limp sigh and collapsed back against his chair. He would just have to hope this bloody business would work.


	6. Reception

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Six—Reception_

"But I want to go with you."

Teddy was leaning his head against Harry's leg and looking up at him with the most winsome expression Harry had ever seen. Sometimes it was hard to remember that Teddy was only eight. He knew enough about manipulation to be a teenager.

"I'm sure you do, but it's going to be fine," said Harry, and flicked his finger against Teddy's nose hard enough to make him cross his eyes a bit. "The Healer only has to see to my leg and make sure the injury healed properly. There's nothing you can do in St. Mungo's except get into mischief." He raised his eyebrows as Teddy blushed. "Unless you were going to tell me that it was your evil twin who smeared those potions all over the walls last time."

"I just wanted to see the colors they would make," Teddy muttered to his feet.

Harry patted his shoulder. "I know." After that, he had taken the hint that, he had to admit, Andromeda had also been trying to give him, and bought Teddy a fine set of paints. "But changing your face so that you look like a different boy and telling them that that evil Teddy Lupin just ran down the corridor isn't a good thing to do either."

Teddy flushed more deeply. Harry and Andromeda had tried to instill in him, as fast as possible, the fact that he had to be careful and responsible with his Metamorphmagus gifts, precisely because it would be so disastrous if he wasn't.

"Okay," he said. "Is that the real reason you aren't taking me along?"

"It is." Harry also wanted to say something about this being an absolutely routine appointment. The Healers had reassured him that he would walk without a limp again, although it would probably take several months of regular exercise to normalize the muscles in his leg. But what Teddy had got up to last time he was there would add a lot more weight.

"Okay," said Teddy again, and let Harry's hand go with a sigh. "You wouldn't take Hugo with you, though?"

_Ah. _Harry crouched down in front of Teddy. "You know that Rose and Hugo aren't more special to me than you are, right?" he whispered. "That I love you all the same?"

Teddy turned his eyes a deep, murky green, the way he usually did when he was feeling melancholy, and didn't answer.

Harry sighed, and glanced around Teddy's bedroom for inspiration. It was the biggest bedroom in Andromeda's house, the one that used to belong to Tonks when she was a girl. It had rocking chairs, dozens of moving toys on the floor and posters on the walls, some books on shelves that sagged because Teddy got the books down so often, and dark purple walls. Harry finally found what he was looking for, and Summoned the practice wand made of holly wood. "You know that I would never trust Rose or Hugo with this?"

"Well, yeah," said Teddy, picking up the wand and frowning down at it. "But that's just because they're little babies and I'm older."

"No, it's not," Harry said, and curled Teddy's fingers around the wand. "It's because Rose is a mischief-maker and Hugo's accidental magic is too wild. Even if they were your age, they would have to change a _lot _before I would trust them with a practice wand."

Teddy's chest visibly inflated. "So I'm not a mischief-maker?"

"You _listen_," said Harry dryly, thinking of last week, when Rose had spilled a huge bowl of soup in the kitchen, on purpose, and then run and slid through it so that she soaked all her clothes. When Ron had told her to stop, she did it again, also on purpose. Some of that was just her being three, but she was sure a lot more stubborn than Harry remembered Teddy being at the same age. "That's more than enough."

Teddy threw his arms around him. Harry bent over the bed and hugged him back, long and hard, then stood up and limped to the door.

"It's only temporary," he added, as he saw the way Teddy's eyes fixed worriedly on his leg. "I promise. And next time, I'll know to stay out of the way of a dragon's kick."

Teddy laughed and relaxed, lying back on his bed and twirling the practice wand. "If you're too long in hospital, I'll just Summon you back," he said, and pointed the wand at Harry. "Bang!"

Harry grinned. He had bought and trimmed a bit of phoenix feather to put inside Teddy's practice wand, so he could cast minor spells, but he was nowhere near the Summoning Charm yet. Even for the spells he _could _cast, he had to practice the wand movements and the incantation perfectly before they would work. "I'll appreciate that. Don't let the evil Healers keep me!"

Teddy laughed again, and Harry left, smiling at Andromeda on the way down, smiling all the way out.

His life wasn't perfect, but he'd had three years to get used to the fact that he couldn't have kids of his own, and he had to admit, Teddy and Rose and Hugo were all pretty good substitutes.

His leg twinged at him then, and he grimaced. Pain was _not _a good substitute for actually being able to walk. At least this shouldn't last too much longer.

* * *

"You're fine, Auror Potter."

The words still echoed in Harry's head, and probably his own wide smile, as he walked out of hospital and took in a deep breath of fresh air. He would still need all the exercise and regular appointments that Healer Sutcliffe had talked about, but at least the long regimen of lying in bed and taking potions all the time was done.

He stood there breathing in all the air that seemed so fresh and clean and pure, even given that he was in an alley behind St. Mungo's, and decided that he would Apparate to Diagon Alley and have dinner in the Leaky Cauldron to celebrate. He could probably catch up with Seamus and Dean there.

Harry had just lifted his wand to Apparate when he heard a soft hoot above him. He looked up, and lifted an arm as the owl came in for a landing. Harry snorted. He had long ago learned that most post-owls weren't as excitable as Pig, but neither were they as smart as Hedwig.

"What would have happened if I'd Apparated just then, huh?" he gently scolded the owl, running a finger along its back.

The owl gave him an unimpressed glance that seemed to convey it would have caught up easily, and then extended its leg. Harry took the letter, giving it a critical look as he did. It didn't have any writing on the outside, and when he opened it…

The strangest message.

For a long time, Harry stood there, reading it over and over. His first instinct was to dismiss it as a joke, but it was a strange sort of joke, if true. The rumors about his infertility never had leaked out to the press; as far as most people knew, he and Ginny had divorced because they'd started arguing all the time and their marriage wasn't perfect after all. So the chances that someone would have sent this to him as a prank were low.

And the owl perched on his shoulder and stared at him in the manner of an owl waiting for a reply, so whoever had written this wanted a regular correspondence.

Harry touched the bottom of the page. _M_. That could have meant anything, could have been the initial letter of a first or last name, could have indicated a place name or a pseudonym. Harry had to admit that he didn't really feel comfortable writing back as Harry Potter to someone who had kept his identity concealed.

_Why not write back as Ethan, then?_

The idea blossomed like the plants in Ethan's garden, and made Harry stand quite still.

On the one hand, it would be a little silly. He had never revealed Ethan's existence to anyone else. He kept the journal, and wrote in it almost daily, and it was a relief knowing that he could retreat to that other existence whenever he needed it. But writing Ethan's name down on a letter would make it a little real to at least one other person outside the journal. Harry didn't think he wanted to deal with the consequences of that.

On the other hand, this was a person he knew nothing about, except the extremely scanty details revealed in the letter. There was no reason they needed to know anything about him, either. And the owl had come to him because of the writer's intense need. Harry had heard of such things, and once seen it happen, with a fellow Auror who had received a letter from an escaped victim of a killer she was tracking. The victim hadn't known who was working the case or even that the wizard who had tried to kill him had murdered other people; he had just written the information about the attack on himself down and sent it out with a breathless plea for someone who could keep him safe from the killer. That had been one of the things that was crucial to solving the case, if Harry remembered it correctly.

What if he wrote back, and he was Ethan Starfall, experienced father with three children, speaking from the center of a settled and peaceful life?

Instead of what he was, which was someone who had a lot more experience with children now than he'd had three years ago, but none of his own? The letter-writer would probably be upset at the idea that he was getting advice from someone who hadn't been a parent.

Harry tucked the letter up and went home—his own flat now, not Dean's—where he sat down in front of the window. The owl had come with him and fluttered around the room aimlessly for a moment before it saw the perch Harry kept for visiting birds and settled on it. Harry Summoned him a bowl of water and owl treats, and turned back to the blank parchment.

Ethan's voice was never far away from him when he was in front of paper like this, and soon it came flooding in.

_Dear "M,"_

_It feels a little distant and cold to call you that, but okay, I can do it. I should let you know that my name is Ethan Starfall and I have three children, so I do have a lot of experience with raising kids. But I'm not pure-blood, as you could probably tell from my family name. I don't know if that will make a difference to you or not. Take my advice with as much skepticism as you want._

_It sounds like what's hitting your son the hardest is your divorce. I haven't been through a divorce myself, but I have friends who have, and it's a tough thing for a child. I wouldn't advise you and your wife getting back together, of course. That would ultimately give him false hope. You should strive to be honest with him._

_Is he the kind of child who would respond well to being treated like an adult? Sit down and tell him as much as you can of the reasons that you and your wife divorced. That will make him feel important and included. That was important for our eldest son when it turned out that he had inherited some magic not many people in our family had. He was afraid that he was adopted, and my wife, Anne, and I had to spend some time talking about inheritances and showing him family trees where other magical gifts skipped generations to calm him down. Some of our friends said the subject was too complicated for him. But we took the time and had the patience to include him, and that was the best solution all round._

Harry smiled as he wrote. He could see Ethan sitting on the couch with James and going through family trees. It was the sort of weird, sweet thing that Ethan would do. He was enthusiastic about _everything _he did, and there was no end to those sweet, weird things. Harry knew that Ethan was not only the person he would have liked to be, but a person he would have liked to live beside.

_Or is he the kind of child who needs more attention to himself and his personality and likes and dislikes? I know that you said you want to raise him as a proper pure-blood heir, but he might be a little young for that. Try talking to him and figuring out what he most wants to be doing. Then, if it isn't dangerous or too mischievous, try doing it with him. That might reassure him that you really care about him, and not just about raising him as your heir._

Harry hesitated over those lines, and then shrugged. It was true. Ethan thought blood purity was absolutely idiotic, and was grateful that his parents had taken him out of the country in the war so that he never needed to deal with someone who believed that shit. And all M had to do was not write to him again if he found Ethan's advice useless.

_Either way, I don't think I can give you more of an idea unless you give me more details. It sounds to me like you're alone with your son a majority of the time, and it's driving you crazy. Is there anyone else you can reach out to? Other children he can play with? Other adults that he likes and admires that you could leave him with for a while? A holiday might be good for both of you._

Harry signed Ethan's name with a flourish, and then turned to the owl. For a moment, he was a bit nervous. It was true that the owl had brought the letter straight to him even though this mysterious M had only reached out for someone who could help him. Would the owl know who Harry was, now, and refuse to carry a letter that had a false name on it? Maybe the owl was really smart.

But the owl snatched the letter and flew straight out the window as though it couldn't wait to be away. Out of investigator's habit, Harry watched it fly and tried to make out what direction it went in, but he couldn't really tell.

He stood there for a few seconds, thinking about it, and then shrugged and smiled. He could hear from M again, or he might not. He probably wouldn't. If raising a proper pure-blood heir was that important to M, then he would recoil the instant he realized that he didn't recognize the name.

That had fulfilled Harry's impulse to visit Ethan's life for the night, so he limped into the kitchen to make himself dinner. At the moment, simple food heated up by the Muggle microwave he'd bought a year ago sounded good.

* * *

"Who's the letter from?"

It was the first interest Scorpius had shown in anything but shrieking and pounding the walls in almost a day. Draco glanced up with a faint smile.

"It's from a friend I wrote to to ask about how to help you," Draco said. It was maybe damaging to be this honest with Scorpius, but just talking to him in the way that Draco's parents had talked to him, and concealed things from him, wasn't working. Draco hoped that the letter contained some suggestions about honesty.

Scorpius scowled at him. "I don't need help." And he turned and stomped out of the library, where the owl had found Draco.

Draco sighed and summoned Izzy to feed the owl as much as its portly little stomach could carry, then went back upstairs. He was exhausted, dealing with his son. He was more than half-tempted to give Scorpius over to his parents after all. At least that would mean he had a holiday of sorts.

Then he opened the letter, and the name struck him like a blow to the gut.

_That bloody bird found a Muggleborn?_

Draco contemplated throwing the letter in the fire instead of reading it. It was important to him that Scorpius be raised with some recognition of his name and heritage and what they meant, and what they didn't mean. He didn't think a Muggleborn could understand that. At the very least, they would probably write a letter full of patronizing advice about how he should take Scorpius out and expose him to Muggle culture.

_At the moment, he has Muggle culture enough on the brain already, _Draco thought. Scorpius had never actually ventured into Muggle London or seen much Muggle technology or eaten Muggle food, but he had decided they must be wonderful because they were the opposite of what his dad was currently trying to make him see or use or eat.

But the owl had gone to someone who could help. If the request to the bird worked at all, Draco didn't think that it would seek out someone who was the opposite of everything he stood for.

So, in the end, he read the letter, but he read it holding it a distance from himself, ready to dash it down and disown it in seconds if it turned out not to be what he wanted.

Instead, it was frank and open and engaging, and showed a distrust of him that Draco couldn't help but commend. Merlin knew that he would be suspicious if some letter showed up out of the blue and gave him the outlines of a situation with a plea for suggestions.

This Ethan Starfall, though…

He'd taken the time to write back. He didn't sound as though he really understood everything about Scorpius and the way that Draco wanted to raise him, but Draco hadn't given him that much to go on, either.

Draco traced a thoughtful finger down the edge of the letter. He hadn't thought of talking to Scorpius exactly like an adult, mostly because that seemed to not succeed at all since Astoria had left. Scorpius acted more childish than ever.

But if he was feeling neglected, perhaps he would. Draco decided that tomorrow, he would try a day without lessons or reminders of what Scorpius's ancestors would have thought of his behavior. He would, instead, talk to Scorpius about the white peacocks in the gardens and explain why his grandfather liked them.

Decision made, Draco tucked the letter away. He didn't know if he would write back to Starfall yet, but it looked likely.

* * *

"Can you understand why Grandfather likes them?"

Scorpius, his hand clutched in Draco's so that he wouldn't rush forwards and grab the peacock's tail, simply shook his head. He had his thumb in his mouth again, too. Draco had read that that would deform his teeth, and tried to stop him from doing it, but he wouldn't.

Draco held back a sigh. If he showed that he was upset with Scorpius, then the situation would follow the same track as it had the other days. Scorpius would scream back at him and stomp off somewhere, and the instant he got his hands on something fragile, it would shatter.

"He likes them because they're graceful," Draco said, keeping his voice low. The white peacocks tolerated him more than they had Lucius, probably because Draco didn't go strolling out among them as often. But they were still nervous and prone to either run away or shriek in their piercing voices. "He wanted reminders of grace around him. He went to prison for a while when I was a baby, you know. When he got out, he decided that he would have as much beauty around him as possible."

"Grandfather went to _prison_?"

Draco started and looked at Scorpius. It had been impossible to hide knowledge of Azkaban from him completely, since he had heard Draco and Astoria talking about it and asked what it was, but Draco supposed, now, that he had never told Scorpius completely about Lucius and his activities in the first war.

He thought of changing the subject, but Scorpius had taken his thumb out of his mouth. And some of Ethan's sentences rang in his head. _That will make him feel important and included._

This wasn't about Draco's divorce from his mum, but maybe peacocks could be a start.

"Yes," said Draco. "Grandfather fought in a war, and he was on the wrong side of the war. The Ministry put him in prison until they decided what to do with him. Then he explained to them what happened, and they let him out."

Scorpius paused. "Why?" he finally settled on, the question he had plagued Draco and Astoria with every day.

Draco took a deep breath. He had made even that explanation too simple, and he would have to be completely clear and see what happened. "He said that he was being controlled by someone else. There's a spell—called the Imperius Curse—that can make you do things you don't want to do."

"You could use it to send me to bed?" Scorpius scowled at him.

"I won't ever cast it on you," Draco said, and Scorpius blinked, apparently impressed by the way Draco said that.

"Okay. Did they use it on Grandfather?"

"The Ministry believed him when he said that he had been controlled. They let him out of prison, and he came back home and got the peacocks."

Scorpius looked around. He knew that his grandparents had lived in the Manor before they decided to let Draco and Scorpius have it completely, because they believed the next Malfoy heir needed to grow up here and see his father being independent. But Draco couldn't tell from the look in his eyes what he was thinking.

"I want lunch."

Draco relaxed. He had wondered if Scorpius would ask more about the war, or whether Lucius had _really _been under the Imperius Curse, and Draco didn't think that was a conversation either one of them was ready to have. "All right. What do you want?"

"I get to choose?"

_When did I stop letting him do that? _Draco distinctly remembered Scorpius choosing dinner sometimes when he and Astoria were still married, and he had thought it had happened since then, too. But it seemed not.

"Yes," said Draco, deciding that he was going to be as gracious as possible. "What do you want?"

"Boiled cod!" Scorpius took off running for the Manor.

Draco followed, relaxation pouring like oil over his body. This was the first full afternoon they had got through without a temper tantrum in…well, forever.

He did write back to Starfall that night, and he began his letter, _Dear Ethan._


	7. A Collection of Letters

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Seven—A Collection of Letters_

When the next letter came, Harry was lying in bed with his leg stretched in front of him and his arms strapped down. He _knew _he shouldn't have scratched that hard at what had originally been a small sting, but how was he supposed to know that it would explode in his face and scatter evil-smelling goo everywhere?

The letter was delivered by the same owl as before, but this time, Harry opened it a lot more eagerly. Someone else in the world knew who Ethan was, and found him convincing enough to respond to. Harry could feel his heartbeat picking up and the prick of sweat on his palms.

_Dear Ethan, _it began, and Harry rested his head against the pillow and savored that beginning for a long second.

Then, curious, he went to the signature, wondering if it would still be the single letter M, only to be confronted by the name _Draco Malfoy._

Harry sat there with his mouth hanging open a little, and then he tipped his head back and began to whoop in laughter.

"Mate?" Ron was walking into his hospital room, carrying Rose. Each evening he or Hermione visited, usually with one of the kids in tow. Ron had been looking at Rose as if he expected her to climb out of his arms and go mad with every object in the room any second, but now, Harry was the one who got that stare. "Is something wrong?"

Harry thought of trying to explain the joke, but that would mean explaining Ethan, and he thought he might see uncomfortable pity in Ron's eyes. Probably not, but _possibly_, and it meant that he didn't really want to tell the truth.

"A strange fan letter," he said, and shook his head, and put the letter underneath his pillow. "What's my favorite girl doing here?" Hermione had brought Rose just yesterday, so it should have been Hugo's turn.

Rose laughed and held out her arms. "Hi, Uncle Harry! I maded a big cake." And then she started telling him a story about a crocodile that Harry found it hard to follow, the way that most of Rose's stories were. One had to just listen and enjoy the experience, as best as one could.

For the first time since Rose had started talking, though, Harry listened to her with only half his attention. He really wanted to get away and continue reading that letter. He woke up only when Rose fell asleep abruptly on his shoulder, and Ron dragged a chair up to the foot of the bed and sat down with a significant look at Harry.

"Yeah, what?" Harry asked, keeping his voice low because of the sleeping child he was holding. Maybe Ron would do the same thing, or at least refrain from yelling the way that he looked as if he'd like to do.

"This is the second time you've wound up in hospital in two months, mate," Ron began, and his voice was low in the way that Harry had last heard it when they were talking about Harry's divorce from Ginny. "I have to wonder if you're—depressed, or taking risks, because of that news we got." He gave Harry another meaningful look that, this time, Harry had to admit he didn't know how to read.

"What news?" Harry rocked Rose as she sighed and shifted in her sleep, and felt a soft protectiveness rise up in his stomach. No, she would never be his blood daughter, but he would fight as hard to defend her as he would have for his blood children if it was still possible for him to have them. "No, really, just raising your eyebrows at me isn't going to tell me what you mean."

Ron sighed hard enough to blow one of the potions vials on the table beside Harry's bed back and forth. "That news about Ginny being pregnant."

"Oh!" said Harry, with a blankness that Ron didn't find convincing, if the way his eyebrows rose was any indication. Harry shook his head. "Honestly, I wasn't thinking about it. I can't say that I'm completely happy for her, but at least I'm happy enough not to be an arsehole about it." And even then, he thought, his lingering bad feelings came mostly from thinking that Michael Corner, Ginny's new husband, was the man she had been planning to sleep with and have sire her children when she and Harry were still together.

"Then why haven't you been paying attention to things?" Ron demanded. "First a dragon kicks you because you stupidly get in the way, and now magically-created wasps? And always to your leg!"

Harry rolled his eyes. "Because I was focused on other things instead. Like getting those kids away from the dragon, and the Killing Curse that that last insane idiot was shooting at my _partner and best friend._"

Ron at least had the sense to look abashed there. As he should, Harry thought, having stumbled into an ambush that he'd been deliberately left out of and ruining it. Harry loved Ron, a lot of the other Aurors in the Department liked working with him, but subtle he was not. "Fine. Then—then you're going to be all right with seeing Ginny and her kid and Michael a few times at parties and holidays?"

"It'll take a while for me to be completely fine, but I won't go up and start yelling at them," said Harry. "Just don't suggest that I be godfather to her kids or anything like that."

"You're already godfather to three of them," said Ron, and looked at Rose, still asleep against Harry's neck although kicking and shifting her legs in a way that indicated she was probably ready to wake up and wreak havoc again. "I don't think you'll any more time for godfatherly duties if we give you another one!"

"If you and Hermione have another one, it would be my honor," Harry said, and caught Ron's eyes for a moment, and made him be serious. "You know that."

Ron snorted and shook his head, almost hiding the flash of delight that danced through his eyes. "We appreciate that, but we're not going to have another one, I'm pretty sure. Two has us stretched as it is." He reached out and flicked a thumb softly against Rose's heel. "So, when are you going to be battle-ready again?"

The conversation drifted, and Harry allowed it to. But all the time, he thought of Malfoy's letter under his pillow, and he probably paid a little less attention to the conversation and to Rose and Ron leaving than he otherwise would. He did listen to make sure their footsteps had faded before he took it out, though.

Not because he feared what they would say about him hearing from Malfoy. It was Ethan's existence he thought they would object to.

_Dear Ethan,_

_I have to admit that I hesitated when I saw your name. I wasn't sure that someone who wasn't from a recognized pure-blood family could tell me the proper way to bring up a pure-blood heir._

Harry scowled mildly. If the whole letter was like that, he would have to change the good opinion of Malfoy he was forming.

_But then I realized that I'm too desperate to refuse help. I read your letter and tried to apply the advice. It worked. Talking to Scorpius about things that his grandfather had done and letting him choose his dinner were small and simple things, but they made him happier than anything has made him since the divorce._

Harry put a hand over his mouth. The mediwitches had shown an alarming tendency to burst into his room if he made any sound at all, apparently under the belief that he must be suffering from some kind of wound and there were lots of people who wanted to assassinate him. He had to muffle his snorts of incredulous laughter at the name.

_Scorpius Malfoy!_

After that had gone on for a while, Harry shook his head and continued reading. He supposed that some people would find the names he had chosen for Ethan's children stupid, too, especially the middle ones, but at least he had never shown anyone else those names.

_It's difficult. I'm having a certain degree of trust in you by revealing this, but now that I've written Scorpius's name and I want more of your advice, it was inevitable in any case. And I want to know if you will continue to write once you know who I am. I would like to know what I can do to talk about the divorce to Scorpius in more detail. My wife and I parted because it bored us to be together. How does one explain that to a five-year-old?_

Then came the signature _Draco Malfoy, _done with the same sort of flowing grandeur that Harry had seen Malfoy use in school.

Harry leaned back with his lip curling a little. They were _bored_? What a reason to abandon a marriage.

But he wasn't sure that trying to explain the story of his own divorce to Malfoy would go well, either. Malfoy would probably tell him to cast a Confundus Charm on Ginny and then take her into the Muggle world and have her artificially inseminated anyway.

_Why am I thinking about that? Malfoy's never going to know that it's me, anyway. He wouldn't trust me, and I won't betray my secret or Ginny's. It's Ethan he's going to get to know._

Luckily, the mediwitches didn't think he was too weak to write letters or that they had to intercept and inspect them. Harry picked up the quill and parchment he needed, and called for ink. He was excited to write back, with Ethan's emotions and not his own stirring in him. Ethan could see even Draco Malfoy as an object of compassion, and understand the reason for his marriage ending like that, because Ethan had a bigger heart than Harry dd.

_Dear Draco (I hope I can call you that?)…._

* * *

_The question you asked is difficult. But if you've explained a few hard things to your son already, then this should come easier. One thing I would emphasize is that your wife and you didn't divorce because of _him, _because she was bored of being his mother or you didn't want to raise him anymore. That would be deadly, if he started believing that._

_Maybe build up to the subject gradually? Talk about your ex-wife, if you can bear to, and it sounds like you can. Show him photographs from the years you were together, and see if he asks about the expression on her face, if he can see the boredom for himself. If he doesn't, then you might tell him the good things about his mum and encourage him to talk about her, too, and show how happy she is with her life now (I assume she is). It would probably help him to see that his parents are happy._

Draco's eyebrows rose, and he leaned back on the couch. This Ethan Starfall had better advice than Draco would have thought. It was an even chance that he only knew a few things about kids and had got the advice right in his first letter by lucky coincidence. Even then, Draco wasn't sure how much someone who had never been divorced and apparently lived in a disgustingly happy marriage would be able to tell him about raising a son.

A lot, it seemed.

_We had to do this with our daughter, recently. She had been getting more and more unhappy, and we honestly didn't know why. She gets most everything she wants (I'm willing to admit that we're more relaxed with her than the others, since she's younger and by the time we had her we both knew that we hadn't made any horrible mistakes with the older two). But it didn't seem to content her the way it had. Her mother talked to her, thinking it might be something more common to girls than boys, but it wasn't that._

_It turned out that she'd seen how we were getting unhappy with some of her behavior in shops. She used to ask for things, and we'd buy them for her without hesitation. But as she's got older, she wants more expensive toys, ones that we don't think she needs. So we buy them for her, but I reckon we were pausing more often and acting more unhappy about it._

_We didn't even know we were doing it. We didn't know she'd noticed. So we talked about it, and she agreed to ask a little less and not throw tantrums when she didn't get something she wanted. Not that she ever had thrown many, but those were so bad that Anne and I were holding back and flinching and not wanting to refuse to by her something in case she had one._

_We were both being dishonest with each other, without realizing it. And it took some time to work out what was going on, because Lily can't be as articulate with us as I can be for her, of course! But then it was there, and we'll all been happier since._

_So maybe try that with your son. Emphasize your own happiness, and hers, and he's more likely to settle down and grow up comfortable. And emphasize that he was in no way the cause of the divorce._

_Yours,_

_Ethan._

Draco laid the letter down and looked towards the corridor that led to Scorpius's wing. The letter had come early enough that he wasn't up yet, and Draco was having a small breakfast of scones and tea. He turned back to the fireplace and tore up a scone absentmindedly, his mind alive with all sorts of thoughts.

They already had done their best to reassure Scorpius that he was beloved, and safe, and happy. That _they _were happy, maybe, Draco corrected himself a second later. He had to admit that when he was Scorpius's age, he wouldn't have taken reassurance that he really was happy when he knew himself not to be at all well.

Ethan had a daughter named Lily. Two older sons. A blissful marriage. Draco wouldn't say that he envied him, not exactly, not when Ethan was Muggleborn and Draco wasn't, but at least he had an interesting life, and not a disrupted one.

And at least this gave him a legitimate reason to firecall Astoria. She would be awake. She said that she found the nights and the early mornings the best time for working on fruitful projects, while she slept during the lazy light of afternoon.

Draco cast some Floo powder in and called, "General Morgana's office!" Astoria was calling her company General Morgana, after one of the most powerful witches in legend, who had influenced the political destiny of England. It was a testament to the impact that she intended her inventions to have on the wizarding world.

It took some doing before the faces of Astoria's subordinates disappeared from the fireplace and Astoria herself appeared. She curled her lip a little when she saw him, the sure sign that he had interrupted her in the middle of one of her projects. "Yes?" she asked curtly.

Draco sighed, and tried to control the paralyzing ennui that was creeping over him merely from looking at Astoria. It had gone from being bored dancing with her and sleeping with her, to being bored when she talked about the things she wanted to invent, to being bored by the sight of her. That probably wasn't healthy, but then again, he wasn't sure he cared.

"I know that you want to help me raise Scorpius the way we should," he said. "Well, lately he's been acting like a brat."

Astoria's lip uncurled. "How?" Even though Scorpius didn't bear her last name, she would take any transgressions against the pure-blood image Draco was raising him in seriously. And she would know that Draco didn't use the word "brat" lightly.

"Throwing things against the wall. Screaming when he doesn't get his way. Trying to tear down his curtains. He even refused to have dinner with Blaise." Draco eyed her, and made sure that she was still listening instead of opening her mouth to comment on the way that Draco was raising their son. She looked calm. Good. "I find an adviser who told me that Scorpius is taking the divorce badly, and that we need to emphasize that we're happier this way and he wasn't the cause."

Astoria considered that as deeply as she had considered Draco's plan for them to divorce, at least if the way her hand rose to touch her head was any indication. Then she nodded. "I can visit to help you with that. Or I can bring Scorpius here if you think that would work."

"It's better if you come here." On Scorpius's last visit to General Morgana's offices, he had talked about the inventions, but not about any time spent with his mum. Draco knew Astoria could get more involved in her work than Scorpius's life, pretty easily, but that was the opposite of what they should be trying to do right now.

"Very well," Astoria murmured, her voice going clipped. "I'll be by this afternoon, then."

"No," Draco said, strongly enough that Astoria stopped and stared at him. "I don't want you showing up in the middle of what should be your naptime and giving less than your full attention to Scorpius because of that. Come tonight. Better later than not focused on him."

For a second, he thought Astoria was going to challenge his characterization of her, but then she tipped her head to the side. "Very well. I'll see you at perhaps eight tonight?"

"That will work," Draco told her. Normally, Scorpius would be on the verge of going to bed by then, but Draco would relax the restrictions so he could spend time with his mum.

Astoria disappeared from the fireplace, and Draco stretched and sighed and stood up. He had a lot to do before he could fully apply all of Ethan's advice, and making the rooms Astoria would stay in comfortable for her was only part of it.

"Daddy?"

Draco blinked and turned rapidly. Scorpius stood in the doorway of the library behind him, his thumb in his mouth again. Draco controlled his automatic irritation at the sight, and nodded. "Yes, Scorpius, what is it?"

"Is Mummy coming because she wants to?"

Caught off-guard, Draco said the first thing that came to mind. "She's coming for you."

Scorpius's eyes widened. Draco wondered what he was thinking. In the old days, before Astoria departed, he used to think that he understood his son well, far better than most of the pure-blood parents trying to raise their children formally understood them. But now he thought that he must only have understood the simple things, the childish things on the surface of Scorpius's mind.

"I can stay here?" Scorpius whispered.

"Oh, yes," Draco said, and knelt down and reached out his arms. Scorpius came a few steps towards him, and then stopped and looked at his face. Draco remembered the time when Scorpius would have rushed forwards, but if he had to sacrifice a shallow understanding for a deeper one, that was what he would do. He forced himself not to simply drop his hands. "She's coming to visit you, to show you that she's happy."

"Happy?" Scorpius popped his thumb back into his mouth.

"Scorpius," Draco said, flinching as he did, because speaking this openly felt like peeling back a layer that had protected him from the outside world. "We didn't divorce because of you. Both of us want you to be happy, you know. We're happier now. We thought you would be, too."

Scorpius again stood there, saying nothing. Draco held his arms out until they started to tremble, with no notion if he was making the right decision or not. He had never felt so vulnerable.

Finally, Scorpius wandered forwards and leaned his head on Draco's shoulder. Draco let out a cautious breath and reached for him, moving slowly so that Scorpius could get away if he wanted to. But it seemed he didn't want to, and Draco finally held him and cradled him, almost rocking him. Scorpius sighed and said, "Sometimes I'm happy." It sounded like one of those simple facts Draco had thought he knew about his son.

Draco was determined not to take those simple facts for granted this time. "I want you to be happy _all _the time," he said. "Can you tell me when you're not?"

Silence, until he thought that he would be relegated to asking every hour. Then Scorpius's head moved against his in the barest of nods.

Draco leaned back against the fireplace and sat there holding his son until both their stomachs rumbled. It was the most precious, uninterrupted time he had had with Scorpius in months, and by the end, he didn't even care how silly he probably looked.

* * *

_Dear Ethan,_

_You were right about working with my son to show him that we were happier than he'd realized. I don't think that he was as happy as I assumed, but if he's growing towards that now, then I'm content._

_My ex-wife came for a visit tonight. She lives in France and works there, but she agreed to sacrifice some of her time to make the Floo journey. If you knew her, you would realize that is a sacrifice, although I suppose it doesn't sound like it to someone with as happy a marriage as you have. She was able to tell Scorpius that she didn't stop being his mum, which was something I hadn't even realized he was worried about._

_Scorpius is behaving a little better. He still screamed when I asked him to clean up his room, but he ate a lunch he didn't choose, and he went to bed right after his mother spoke with him. I think this might work. I can't believe that you were able to offer me such good advice—someone my owl went to on a chance. And I think that this might be harder when I start training Scorpius more the way a pure-blood heir should be trained, because those ways aren't the same as Muggle or Muggleborn ideals. But for now, I have to thank you._

_The best way of thanking you, to me, would be explained if we could meet. Do you live closer to London or to Hogsmeade?_

_Sincerely,_

_Draco Malfoy._

Harry snorted at the last words and shook his head. Malfoy was getting a little pushy, wasn't he? He didn't even know if Ethan was someone he'd be partial to in person, and he wanted to _meet _him?

It was impossible, of course. Harry had never developed a glamour that would allow him to pass as Ethan Starfall, and he never would. It would be dishonest. He supposed that writing letters to Malfoy could be seen as dishonest, too, but at least the advice was real, and helping. Otherwise, Ethan was going to stay in the pages of his journal, Harry's private game and pretense. If Malfoy got too insistent, then Ethan would just melt away. It wasn't as though Harry had left any trace of his existence in the wizarding world, not when he hadn't ever mentioned Ethan to the outside world before.

He picked up a piece of parchment and began to write.

_Dear Draco,_

_I'm very glad that your son is learning that you do love him and care about his happiness, and that his mother does, too. I can't even imagine what it would be like to be a child going through the pains of divorce, but I know he needs you._

_I don't think meeting would be a good idea for a number of reasons…_


	8. Ethan a Mystery

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Eight—Ethan a Mystery_

_ …I know that you want to meet me, and I feel flattered by that, but I have to admit, I'm a little put off by the way that you keep referring to pure-blood heritage and ideologies in all the letters that you send me. Are you going to despise me when we meet face-to-face and you see that I really am an undistinguished half-blood? I read an article a few years ago that talked about the features you can recognize pure-blood wizards by, and I don't have any of them. Not the aquiline nose or the deep-set eyes or the high forehead or the special way that you speak._

_I'm glad I can help you with your son. I think certain advice can cross all sorts of boundaries and touch the hearts of different people. But I won't set myself up to confront someone who will despise me on sight._

_Another thing I would tell you about Scorpius: see if he can understand the difference between temporary and lasting happiness, like the temporary happiness he gets out of flinging his dishes at the wall, and the lasting happiness that he gets from being with you and his mum. My own elder son understood the distinction a lot younger than I had thought he would._

_Yours, _

_Ethan._

"You don't usually frown that hard over a letter, Draco."

Draco looked up absently as Astoria came into the room, her robes flowing behind her. She wore the same robes that she had when they were married, he saw, pale green ones that he supposed she thought complemented her coloring. She had always claimed to be too busy to buy new ones. That failure to keep up a certain standard had been part of what bored Draco about her.

Draco decided that he might as well tell her about Starfall. She didn't care enough to mock him for it, or to spread the news as gossip. "It's a letter from the man who's been advising me about Scorpius. I invited him to meet me. He says he doesn't want to meet someone who holds to pure-blood standards."

"He sounds intelligent." Astoria sat down and reached for the marmalade.

Draco reared back. Lack of standards or not, that hadn't been at all the response he thought he would get from Astoria. "What? Then you think that I shouldn't be rearing Scorpius by pure-blood standards, either?"

"It's one thing for people who were raised to it, and take to it, the way you did," Astoria said, pausing to stare at him. "It's another for people who were never raised to it, the way you say this man wasn't, and for people who were raised to it and for whom it didn't take." She pointed a silent finger at her own chest, then went back to spreading the marmalade.

Draco shook his head. This was something he had forgotten about Astoria, or never known. At the moment, he couldn't remember which. He only knew that it was annoying that Ethan would judge him like this, when Draco had simply spoken his thoughts straight out, and not said anything about what would matter to him in an adviser.

"But if he doesn't want to meet with me, why does he keep writing to me?" Draco asked.

He had meant to muse aloud, but Astoria answered him as if she thought the question was directed at her. "Perhaps he wants to help with Scorpius, whatever he thinks of you. Does he seem to love children?"

"Yes," said Draco shortly. And Ethan did. Or perhaps Draco should think of him as Starfall, since the man was so prickly and unfriendly.

_Seriously, I never said anything about wanting him to have an aquiline nose._

"Well, then." Astoria moved the sleeve of her robe delicately out of the way of the marmalade that spread in an orange flood over her bread. "He might want Scorpius to be happy, and not you."

Draco winced and slumped back in his chair. That stung more than Astoria could know. Draco didn't think he had many close friends, except for Blaise, and his parents when they were on speaking terms. Sometimes he saw Pansy, but not usually for much more than a few hours of gossip before Pansy was rushing off to her efforts to prove that a new breed of dragons existed in far northern Finland.

_Why do all the women I know have ambition to work outside of the home, and I'm the only one who has the ambition to work inside it, at raising children? That's the most important thing you can do!_

Maybe that was another reason Ethan's rejection stung, Draco had to acknowledge. Because he had seemed to be a man like Draco, who spent all his time thinking about children and the future and how to make sure that the children _became _that future, but he still wanted to separate himself from Draco and make a different kind of life.

_Maybe you shouldn't place such dependence on the friendship of a man you haven't ever met._

But that was the kind of thing Draco wouldn't admit to anyone in his life. Blaise would laugh his head off. The others weren't even possibilities.

Astoria finished gnawing her bread and stood up. "I should be returning to the lab."

Draco narrowed his eyes. "I thought you would at least say goodbye to Scorpius before you went."

"I talked to him a lot yesterday," said Astoria, shaking her head. "He knew to expect me gone when he woke up this morning."

"You care more about your career than about him," Draco said.

"I care more about my career than about _raising _him," Astoria corrected him. "And that, dear Draco, is a large part of the reason he's with me and not you." She paused delicately. "Another reason is that when I did try to introduce him to inventions and magic that would improve those inventions, you said I shouldn't."

"Scorpius is never going to have to work for a living. He doesn't need to know about those things."

"You problems run too deep for this half-blood to help you with," Astoria said, and walked out of the breakfast room.

Draco cursed, kicked the leg of a chair, and then felt uncomfortably childish—which was probably exactly the way Astoria had meant to make him feel.

At least it was a few more minutes until Scorpius woke up and wandered into the kitchen with a bleary look on his face, which gave Draco some more time to think about how he was going to respond to Ethan, and what they were going to do today.

Scorpius sat down in Astoria's chair and said, "Butter!" It promptly appeared on the table, and Scorpius hooted gleefully and grabbed it.

Draco watched him eat, slathering his scones with butter that he had long since learned both to spread himself and to restrict to an appropriate amount. There was no way that Draco was going to tolerate his child slobbering over butter and only eating it instead of actual food, but on the other hand, he didn't want to deprive Scorpius of one of his own pleasures.

_This is a child who'll never have to work. This is a child who only has to meet people who aren't pure-blood at Hogwarts, unless he wants to make the effort to seek them out._

Given that, the way that Astoria had talked about raising Scorpius just wasn't feasible. But it still didn't give Starfall the right to decide that Draco was prejudiced against someone who had helped him, all without meeting him. What could Starfall be going on, anyway? The reports of Draco's crimes during the war, by now more than a decade old? Starfall had bragged about avoiding all the prejudice, but he had taken in some of it after all.

Draco's mouth firmed. He would write back to Ethan and let him have it. If Ethan couldn't stand that, then Draco would know he was better off without him. He had enough advice about Scorpius to be going on with, anyway.

If he _could _sting Ethan and make him reconsider meeting Draco, though…

He might try it. There was no way to be sure it would work, but simply giving up and letting what Ethan and Astoria had said rankle with him and seem true was _not _an option.

"Daddy!"

Draco blinked and looked up. Scorpius had one butter-covered thumb in his mouth and was staring at him.

_He's waiting for me to react, _Draco realized, in the moment before he caught sight of the butter dripping down Scorpius's sleeve and wanted to react anyway. But he didn't want to reward negative acts with attention. That wasn't the sort of thing a pure-blood parent would do.

A pure-blood parent was what he was, in spite of the efforts of other people to change him.

"I'm displeased, Scorpius," he said, in the calm voice that he knew used to drive Scorpius wild when Draco and Astoria still lived with each other. "Now you've made more work for the house-elves, and you'll have to have a bath before Blaise comes and takes you to see the unicorns they have in that children's park."

Scorpius immediately sat up, his eyes wide. "I don't want a _bath!_"

"But you have to." Draco gestured to the butter on Scorpius's clothes again. "You don't think that Uncle Blaise will want to go anywhere with someone who looks like that? Who's so dirty all the time? I know he won't."

"I don't care," said Scorpius, and his lip was sticking out in a way that Draco despised for the way that it disfigured his face, but also knew was probably useless to try and stop. "And Uncle Blaise won't care!"

Draco let his own careful silence answer that. Scorpius knew what Blaise was like, and while Blaise would smile and joke and not make Scorpius take a bath, he would also refuse to be seen in public with him. He would just sit at home with Scorpius and play with him until Scorpius either changed his mind or Blaise felt he'd spent enough time with him.

Scorpius slammed his plate on the table and stood up. Draco let him make it to the doorway before he spoke up, his voice as gentle and polite as before. "True pure-blood heirs are never small and petty like that."

Scorpius hunched his shoulders, but didn't turn around and snap at Draco the way he would have only a few days before. He just walked through the door and shut it behind him.

In its own way, Draco knew, that was as pointed an answer as he could have made by shouting. Draco didn't much care. He was smiling as he picked up Ethan's letter. He _could _parent on his own, and if Ethan insisted on abandoning him, then he wouldn't be much worse off.

* * *

Harry winced and looked at the letter on the table from Malfoy, then looked away again. He had read it, but he had been tired, finally released from hospital and working late and long to make up for paperwork he was behind on, and he had flung the letter away from him in a frenzy of impatience at its content. So he hadn't replied yet, and Malfoy's owl was growing dust on its talons as it crouched on the perch he had for visiting birds and hooted disapprovingly at him.

Harry finally sighed and picked up the letter again, wondering if he had misread what so irritated him.

_Dear Starfall, as perhaps I should call you since you want some formal distance between us,_

_Do you think that the appearance of another wizard matters to me? Why would I have suggested meeting you, if it did? I knew from the first who you were; you took enough care to announce it. I haven't disdained your advice. I applied it, and it works. For me, competence in the actions of someone I asked for help matters more than their blood._

Harry tapped his fingers on the edge of the desk where he kept a pile of the books that Hermione was always giving him as presents and stared out the high window the owl had flown through once before. All right, not as offensive as he had thought. Although he still resented Malfoy's way of speaking as though Harry was an employee he'd hired, one who currently wasn't giving satisfaction.

But that wasn't the same as hating and despising him because of his blood. Harry had had Ethan adopt the tactic because he was absolutely sure that Malfoy would back off. He talked about raising his son in the "traditions" of his family, why wasn't it reasonable for Harry to assume that?

_I wanted to meet you to thank you. At the very least, I wanted to express my gratitude in person. I find the medium of letter and ink a clumsy way to do it. And it must be especially clumsy, since you managed to misinterpret my intent so badly._

_I do not despise you. I think that you don't know as much about pure-bloods as you think you do, and if you persist in that ignorance when I have shown you that we aren't as bad as you thought, you'll become offensive. But for the moment, you're still someone I would like to speak with, someone I would like to meet._

_If you don't want to do that, all you have to do is say so. I will retire, and you can maintain your own kind of purity among your acquaintances._

Harry winced again, and then sat down in the chair next to the desk, which, he noticed from the corner of his eye, made the owl perk up. Malfoy might say that he didn't express himself well in letters, but his words sure could sting.

_But I think there is no good reason for us not to meet. You've provided me with valuable advice. I want to say thank you. You don't have friends among my enemies. You don't have a grudge against my family, or you would never have written me back. You don't have a grudge that comes from the war, either. Your children sound interesting, and your wife as if she makes you happy. You could not hurt me._

That last line made Harry snort bitterly and drop his head against the back of the chair. "If you had the _least _idea," he told the ceiling.

The owl shifted on its perch and dropped a pellet on the floor. Harry sighed and looked at the last little paragraph of the letter.

_If you have your own reasons for not wanting to meet, by all means say so, and I will do my best to accept them._

_Sincerely,_

_Draco._

Harry leaned his forehead on his hand and regarded the letter some more, but nothing came to mind. There were no good choices here. He shouldn't have written to Draco as Ethan at all, or let that name out into the world. Ethan Starfall was his private consolation and his private joy, never meant for anyone else's eyes, whether or not they would tease him for it.

So, while he still couldn't explain who he was, because Malfoy would probably hunt him down if that happened, he could try to apologize. And give an explanation that at least was the truth without nuance.

He picked up another sheet of parchment, because the first one in front of him wasn't inspiring him with Ethan's voice at all, and closed his eyes and sat there for a bit before he finally opened his eyes and put quill to paper.

_Dear Draco,_

_Yes, I have reasons of my own for not wanting to meet. I should have told you the truth from the beginning, that we could never know each other and never be friends in person, and perhaps I should never have responded to your initial letter. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to raise your hopes and then dash them down again._

_I'm glad that my advice has helped you raise your son. That has to be the chief joy that came out of this correspondence, that I know I helped you. I hope that you and your son and even your ex-wife have plenty of happy times in the future._

Harry winced again. Here came the hardest part, but both his conscience and the owl walking and clucking anxiously on the table were telling him that he would be in danger if he stopped.

_I'm sorry for assuming that you wouldn't want to meet up with someone who wasn't pure-blood. You're right that you weren't asking for friendship or for anything other than advice. And I'm the one who chose to answer that letter. I just could have sent it on to someone else the way that you suggested I do if I didn't have the experience raising children._

_Again, I'm sorry. I made lots of assumptions, especially the assumption that we could just maintain this correspondence for a long period of time and you would never demand anything more than that. You caught me off-guard when you asked for a meeting, and that was why I responded the way I did. I know nothing can actually make up for answering your letter in such a nebulous way, but I offer my apologies for what good they can do._

Harry hesitated as he thought about how to sign it, then firmed his mouth and clutched his quill. No, he was going to do this.

_Sincerely,_

_Ethan Starfall._

The last word paired with the false name seemed mocking to him, but anything else would seem more mocking still. Harry folded the letter carefully into its envelope and didn't even have the chance to hold it out before the owl snatched it from him. Hooting in agitation, the owl took off and soared through the window. Harry sucked at the blood from its talon-scratch on his finger.

_I'm sorry, Draco, _he thought, calling Malfoy by his first name in his mind as he never would aloud. _I hope you can understand._

* * *

_This is the strangest letter I've ever received in my life._

Draco leaned his chin on his palm and regarded Ethan's letter. But it didn't change form, or sprout more paragraphs, or explain itself. There it was, a bald apology for something that shouldn't have needed an apology in the first place.

_Why did he send this, if he meant what he said in the first letter? _

But then Draco shook his head and snorted. His father had always emphasized careful and multiple rereadings of important communications. Draco had found the answer to that on the second trip through the letter. There was no sign that Ethan had _ever _believed that Draco held blood purity beliefs. He had just thought those beliefs were a convenient excuse not to meet with him.

_What are the sorts of things that would cause people to avoid going out in public?_

Well, if they were hideously deformed, of course. Draco reckoned that someone who was hideously deformed could still write a plausible-sounding letter and might even have found someone who would want to marry them and have children with them, even if his wife had to close her eyes when they were in the same bed.

But there were other answers that he had to consider before he settled on that as the final one.

Perhaps Ethan was shy and socially graceless, only confident when he had ink and parchment between himself and the world. Perhaps he was a known criminal and needed to stay out of public places; he had only responded to Draco's letter in that case because he'd known that Draco would hardly go around advertising his source of advice.

_Or perhaps he's simply lying._

That consideration came along with the kick of truth, and made Draco narrow his eyes and growl dangerously, low in his throat. His father had told him he would know when someone was trying to take advantage of him, if he just listened to his instincts. And Draco had been right about numerous things, including people who had tried to kidnap Scorpius or to simply take his money, and about Astoria's parents when they came asking for money for "Astoria and her inventions."

The thing was, what could Ethan possibly have to gain from lying? It wasn't like he had suggested that Draco send out a letter, or that he could have known the owl would choose him even if he had. Draco knew that Blaise had really been Blaise, not someone Polyjuiced into his friend, and Draco's owl had likewise been with him for years and was thoroughly guarded against enchantments that would influence him. Ethan couldn't know that Scorpius would have problems as a result of the divorce. He couldn't know that Draco and Astoria would divorce, for that matter. This kind of lie, the elaborate edifice of deception that had immediately sprung up in Draco's head, wouldn't stand for long; it would be toppled by the sheer effort of all the coincidences and good luck Ethan would have to have.

_Maybe that was why he backed away from trying to fool you so quickly. Because he saw that he couldn't keep up the lies._

But Draco had been willing to trust him, to meet with him. What had suggested to Ethan that his pretenses wouldn't work indefinitely?

_What if it's a specific kind of lie? The sort that would work through the medium of a letter but not in person?_

Considering it, Draco had to nod decisively. Yes, _that _made much more sense. Not that he liked being tricked or lied to, about anything at all, but Ethan might think Draco would never ask to meet, and he could go along his merry way deceiving Draco, only to be confronted by a request he had never planned on. So he had to back out.

Which left totally unanswered the question of what Ethan would have to gain from lying in the first place.

But Draco distrusted Ethan more than he did that kick in his gut that told him it was true, that Ethan had lied about _something_.

_For now, _Draco decided slowly, cocking his head so he could study the letter from all sides and make sure he really hadn't missed any clues, _I'll go along with this. I want to know what he thinks he can win from me, who he thinks he is. I'll tell him that we don't have to meet up, and go on asking his advice about Scorpius._

_I'll lure him in, make him comfortable, the way he was planning on doing with me. It might not get me much closer to the truth, unless I can trick him into a meeting, but at least it gives him more time to slip up and betray his real intentions._

A faint smile on his face, Draco reached for the parchment that he had piled beside him in readiness and started writing, pausing every few words to make sure that the shapes of the letters and the splatters of ink didn't betray his anger or his real purpose.

_Dear Ethan,_

_Apology accepted. Just make sure that you don't accuse me of baseless blood purity beliefs again. I don't have them._

_One thing I was wondering…_


	9. A Series of Complications

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Nine—A Series of Complications_

"Auror Weasley asked me to talk to you because he thought that perhaps you had adopted a deliberately self-destructive pattern."

Harry stared at Kingsley across the desk, and then ruined all the careful formality he knew Kingsley was trying to bring to this conversation by slumping forwards with his head in his hands, and snorting. "Ron thinks that I'm trying to kill myself or something?"

Kingsley shifted in his chair and cleared his throat with a delicacy that Harry usually appreciated, but not now. "Auror Weasley is concerned that the number of injuries to your leg in the last few months, combined with the news that your former wife is—er—awaiting the birth of a child—"

"She's pregnant, Kingsley, you can say it," said Harry, and grinned a little as he watched Kingsley's face color up. Then he snorted again. "And I'm not trying to deliberately hurt myself. I've had a run of bad luck, like so many Aurors do now and again."

"But so many injuries to the same area." Kingsley appeared relieved that he wasn't going to have to talk about Harry and Ginny's former marriage. "Auror Weasley thought that perhaps you were not allowing the first injury time to heal properly."

Harry shrugged. "I did everything the Healers told me to. Perhaps they overestimated how healed I was."

"Very likely." Kingsley nodded, then paused. Harry braced himself. "Regardless, you're still going to be behind a desk for the next month."

"A _month_?" Harry stood up and pointedly flexed his legs. "The Healers said that a week of bed rest at the most would make me well, and I've had a fortnight!"

"Being behind a desk isn't bed rest," said Kingsley, and his faced filled with unholy glee. "Particularly as you're going to be dealing with applications for our next class of trainees."

"Kingsley," said Harry, and tried his best to assume a pathetic appearance, which would have been easy if he wasn't feeling really healthy after all the enforced relaxation and potions the Healers had piled on him. "You want to take someone you think is fragile and put them through _that_?"

"Don't worry," said Kingsley sweetly. "If you can't stand up under the rigors of it, I can always send you back to hospital."

* * *

"Draco, can I talk to you?"

Draco glanced up from the diary he was reading, one of his Great-aunt Honoria's. She had described, in some detail, how her parents had raised her much-younger brother; she had already been almost twenty when he was born, and of an age to enjoy the raising and note details without being blinded by resentment or immaturity. Draco thought that he might find some valuable suggestions for training Scorpius there.

Now Blaise hovered in the doorway of his private study, face grave. Draco stood quickly. "What is it? Has something happened to Scorpius?"

"No. He just said something today that I wanted to talk to you about." Blaise walked into the room and closed the door behind him, but didn't say anything after that. He only stood there, apparently listening to the quiet flickering of the fire, until Draco brought his hand down in a slashing motion.

"You're still talking like it's an illness."

"You don't have to worry about him," Blaise said dryly. "He enjoyed the day, and right now he's eating cake and happily playing with the house-elves' illusions and this little charmed lion that we bought today." He hesitated. "He said that he doesn't want to be a Malfoy, Draco."

Draco sagged into his chair hard enough to make Blaise yell for a house-elf. Izzy appeared, squeaking and concerned.

"It is _not _a heart attack," Draco said, holding up one palm to prevent her from overreacting. His father had had a heart attack immediately after the war, stress exacerbating a heart defect they hadn't known was there, but Draco thought his friends and servants too likely to jump to the wrong conclusions here. He looked up at Blaise. "What was the context for this…"

He stopped. It was so horrible that he didn't even have a word for it.

Luckily, Blaise understood what he was trying to say, and supplied an answer for it. "It was when we were coming back through Muggle London and he stopped and watched one of those flying devices they have. Aeroplanes?" Blaise spoke the word with relish, and Draco grimaced and nodded. He had seen one once. That was enough. "He said that Muggles had a lot more fun than wizards, and sometimes he didn't want to be a wizard. I reminded him that we had magic and they didn't. He said, 'That's right.' Then he was quiet for a while, and then he said, 'I don't want to be a Malfoy.'"

"Did he say why?"

"I assumed," said Blaise, "by the power of my fabulous and brilliant intellect, that it was connected to what he'd said already. You do rather deprive the child of fun, Draco. You can't even take him to have fun yourself. It's always me or Pansy who has to do it."

Draco stood straight up. "If you resent me asking you to take my son somewhere, just say the word, and you'll never have to do it again."

"Oh, for fuck's sake," Blaise said, making Draco flinch a little again. Draco had never known someone who swore so casually. "I don't mind taking him anywhere. He's a good little kid, and I like spending time with him."

Draco frowned some more and opened his mouth to ask what the problem was, then, but he didn't get the chance. Blaise was charging on and spinning out sparks of that intellect he liked to talk about. "What I _don't _like is that you take every sign of the way he talks as though that means he'll hate everything about you by the time he's seven."

"What? I don't—"

"You think he has to be a little adult now, and you're _terrified _that he might grow up and reject his heritage." Blaise eyed him measuringly. "I told you what he said not because I really believe that, you know. That's because certain people in the world are _smarter_."

Draco held onto his temper with a vengeance. "Then why did you tell me?"

"Because I didn't want him to innocently repeat it later and have you yell at him." Blaise slid his hands into his pockets, and asked, "Can I get a drink around here?" Izzy promptly appeared with a glass of champagne, which Blaise liked for some reason, on a tray. "And I wanted you to know something about what he really thinks and feels. He's developing that mask you think he should, all right, but you're the one who can't see behind it."

Draco turned his head away. "Well, that's a gentle way of telling me that I'm doing a horrible job raising my son, I suppose."

"And that's another reason that I don't often say this to you, because you take it all so _personally_," said Blaise. He reached out and picked up the diary Draco had been reading. "All you do is sit in your house all day and brood on what Scorpius is going to become, and how you're going to train him, and the lessons you'll give him. You're always thinking about when he's older."

"So did my father."

"And his choices always worked out _so well_."

Draco flinched again, but Blaise had known him too long and well to be put off by that. He just stood there, looking Draco in the face, and then continued in a quiet, penetrating voice Draco hadn't heard in a long time.

"Listen to me, Draco. You need to spend some time doing something other than just sitting around the house. Come out with me more often. Go out with Pansy for longer than an hour or so. Accept one of Theodore's invitations. He's told me that he's asked you to Switzerland and India _and _Thailand, and each time, you spurn those invitations as though he'd asked you to dredge through that muck he finds so fascinating. You know he'd just want you to lounge around in the houses he stays in and have some fun with him in the evenings, when he's cleaned up."

Draco shook his head, feeling his mouth form a thin line. "I don't despise Theodore for working with—the dirtier sorts of potions ingredients. He makes good money enough. It's the other part of his life I can't stand."

Blaise stared at him in what seemed like genuine confusion. Draco sneered and started to make a remark about fabulous intellects, but then Blaise said, "_Ah_. Because he has love affairs and actual passion in his life, I suppose."

"I have passion!"

"For tradition. I hate to break this to you, Draco," Blaise said, and leaned forwards to whisper ostentatiously, "but traditions can't love you back."

Draco stood there, boiling with the passion that Blaise had told him he didn't have, and wanted to snap, badly. Blaise thought that he was too calm, that he was too devoted to tradition? Well, Draco would start a tradition right now of punching smug friends who thought they could talk to him that way in the face, and see what _Blaise _did about that.

"There's no reason for you to despise Theodore," said Blaise, looking him in the eye now the way he only did when he wanted to be serious. "He's tried to be your friend. He's said that you can bring Scorpius with you. He's offered to take care of Scorpius himself. He's offered to bring you into his business and let you handle the negotiations, because it would give you something to do and he's as concerned about you huddling alone in this house as I am. You keep refusing. The only reason for you to do that and then languish to Pansy and me about how you never see him is because he isn't living the sort of emotionless life that you think proper for a pure-blood."

"I love my son. I'm _not _emotionless."

"But you're trying to be," said Blaise. "Another nugget of advice, Draco. My mother tried to show me traditions that were beautiful and pleasant, so I'd _want _to follow them. Dropping a load of dung on your son and calling it tradition isn't the way to make him love it."

Draco curled his lip. "Thank you for taking Scorpius to Muggle London today," he said, and made sure that every word was etched in the sort of clear vowels that Blaise liked to tease him about not having. "I'm sure he had a good time. Now, get out of my house." He laid his hand on his wand just in case Blaise didn't get it.

"You're making so many mistakes that you just don't see," said Blaise, not moving, which was most unlike him. Draco knew Blaise was a lot of things, not all of them things one could discuss in public, but he was no hero and no Gryffindor. "You don't have to give up your life solely to the raising of Scorpius. You'll just end up resenting the poor kid because you can't have fun and he won't follow the pure-blood ways that you want him to, anyway. You might as well let him have some fun, and have some fun yourself."

"Get out," Draco whispered again. His hand had closed on his wand to the point where he was vaguely surprised he hadn't snapped it. "When I want your advice, I'll _ask _for it."

"I'll see you next week when we have that day you're supposed to actually visit me and Pansy for a while," said Blaise, and then turned and walked out of the study.

Draco sat down, shaking. Tremors had invaded his body, and he didn't really know if it was all because he had nearly drawn his wand on Blaise, or because of the news Blaise had brought him. Draco had known he wasn't doing everything perfectly, but he'd thought he was getting better lately, partially because of Ethan's advice. Why had Scorpius decided that he would rather not be a Malfoy _now_, of all times?

He should listen to Blaise, he thought. Blaise was the one who knew more of what it was like to be a pure-blood than Ethan did, who had admitted right up-front that he was an outsider.

But Draco's head was whirling, and the only solid thing he had to cling to was that Ethan had given him good advice once before.

He dug around for parchment and ink an embarrassingly long time before he remembered that he could command a house-elf to bring them to him. Then he had to sit there some more embarrassing pauses of time before he could come up with the words that would reveal his need to Ethan but not bare too much of his heart.

He was not satisfied with the letter that he sent on its way at last, but at least it would make Ethan understand that the need was urgent.

* * *

_Dear Ethan,_

_My best friend told me today that my son had said he didn't want to be a Malfoy. Oh, not to me, but to my friend as they walked through Muggle London, where my friend took Scorpius to see the sights._

_I don't know what to do. My friend thinks that trying to teach Scorpius to love these traditions is going to drive him away from them, but I can't simply give up and allow Scorpius to do whatever he wants. That's not a good idea for raising any child, even one who isn't the heir to a proud family._

_Please advise me._

Malfoy hadn't signed the note this time, but perhaps he thought there was no need. Harry sighed, shifted his weight, and laid the letter on one side of the desk, next to the staggered pile of Auror trainee applications. There were so many that he'd had to bring them home with him, and he still hadn't reached the end of half the essays.

Malfoy's letter was almost refreshing, in contrast.

It still took Harry a few minutes to shrug off the Auror mantle and put on the one of Ethan Starfall, untroubled wizard, but when he did, words that were as honest as he could make them spilled onto the page.

_Dear Draco,_

_Yes, that does sound like a bad situation. First, I have to ask: is the thought of Scorpius growing up without becoming a perfect Malfoy such a bad thing?_

_I take it that you know by now I'm no friend to pure-blood traditions. I don't despise them, but I do think that people should be free to follow their inclinations, and not scorned all their lives because they chose not to follow one particular one. I don't know exactly what you're teaching your son, but if he doesn't like it and he's resisting it, then why not try teaching him something else for a while?_

_I'm saying this for Scorpius's sake, mostly, but also for yours. You sound so desperately unhappy. Do you _really _want to be this stern and unbending representation of tradition, yourself? Do you lie awake at night and judge yourself for all the ways you've failed? I used to do something similar, though not with pure-blood traditions, of course, and I realized that trying to live up to this impossible standard made me much more unhappy than just giving it up did._

Harry had to pause, and choke back a chuckle. He doubted that Malfoy would suspect he had lain awake at night worrying about not meeting the wizarding public's impossible standards for a hero.

_Let him never suspect it. _Such contact and communication as Malfoy had built, after all, was with Ethan Starfall, not Harry Potter.

That was a bit sad, when one thought about it. But Harry was thinking about Malfoy and Scorpius right now, not his own life. He shook his head, and returned to the letter.

_Maybe it's time to think about what's most important, about what Scorpius likes, about what you can't bear to give up, and what you can. I don't think that you should just shrug off all your heritage and devote yourself to pleasure, but what you're doing right now isn't working. Why not try something that will? Even if that something is just talking to Scorpius and seeing what happens._

_Yours,_

_Ethan._

* * *

Draco laid Ethan's letter against his leg and tilted his head back to stare up at the ceiling.

Not even Ethan understood. He was _alone_.

Well, Ethan was a liar who was only paying court to Draco for his own mysterious reasons, no matter how much he seemed to understand. Draco had been silly for expecting sympathy from that quarter.

He set about systematically ripping up the letter, until small white flakes lay scattered all around his chair. He might have gone on doing the same thing until the flakes were indistinguishable from dust if the fireplace hadn't flared unexpectedly to life in front of him.

Draco stared. Not even Blaise or Pansy could get through his wards without prior permission. The only people who could were—

"Mr. Zabini informed me that I would find you brooding and feeling sorry for yourself. I am pained to see that he was correct."

Draco felt a flush of freezing fire travel all through his body, locking his hands into place on the arms of the chair and his legs into place in front of him. "You needn't have contacted me if it bothered you so much, Mother."

Narcissa only stared at him in cool silence for a few minutes, as though inviting him to retract the statement. Draco didn't. They had started out with insults, and that meant she might as well take herself off. At least they had _descended _to insults in the course of their last argument about Scorpius.

"You need some occupation," said Narcissa, "other than holding yourself up as a mirror to Scorpius and brooding every time a feature does not match."

"I also don't need another argument about Scorpius," Draco retorted, and reached out to close the fireplace.

"Will you listen to me, Draco? I love my grandson, but I love you, too, as my child. And I am concerned about you."

Draco hesitated, then stayed his hand. He grunted when Narcissa only paused, apparently awaiting permission to begin. He couldn't remember ever seeing her do that before. She must be concerned about him, the way she had said.

"Thank you," said Narcissa, and looked into his face. "I think you worry too much about doing things that no Malfoy has ever done. You told me once that no Malfoy has ever divorced before, or raised their son without the cooperation of another parent, or in a world in which their name was disgraced. That means that you have to be more vigilant what it comes to raising Scorpius, and protect him more."

"I remember my own words perfectly well," Draco retorted, but he was a little startled that _she _had remembered them so well. Most of the time, when he argued with his parents, he had the sense they weren't listening to him. They were just coming up with their own arguments that they would speak when it was their turn.

Maybe they were listening more closely than he'd thought. Maybe he should listen to them more often.

Narcissa leaned forwards a little. "It's time for you to know that there were Malfoys in the past who divorced, and there were times that our family name was disgraced. Lucius hushed up those tales because he thought you would have enough to cope with, when it came to living under the shadow of the accusations against him in the first war."

"I never thought about that," said Draco blankly. And he couldn't remember anybody specifically giving him a hard time about that. Most of the children he knew well in Slytherin, or before he went to Hogwarts, had parents in the same situation. And once he got to Hogwarts, the people who disliked him were the ones who were going to hate him because of his name, not because of recent history. "I—you mean some of our ancestors _did _divorce?"

"Yes." Narcissa gave him a look almost of pity. "Or at least separate, and live apart from each other, with other lovers. Did you think that the failure of your marriage was somehow unique, Draco, that you were lesser than everyone else who ever walked the corridors of the Manor? I cannot imagine why you would think that. Only the other day I was thinking that our labors to instill some pride in you had borne marvelous fruit."

Draco bristled a little. "I think I deserve to have some pride about all that my ancestors have done."

"Which includes reality," said Narcissa. "Marriages that did not work out. Marriages that did not endure. Parents who died or abandoned their responsibilities. Wizards' duels that did not go as they were supposed to. Foolish investments." She paused again. "I know that you spend a lot of your time looking up histories and diaries in the library. You never ran across any of this?"

"I had no reason to look for it," said Draco. "I was looking for information on our traditions and the child-rearing history of our family."

Narcissa sighed and bowed her head a little, heavy hair tumbling down her neck. "I wish you could believe that you were a good father," she murmured. "Since it seems to bother you so much."

"I think I could be better, that's all," said Draco. He hesitated, and then decided to tell her. "And now, according to Blaise, Scorpius is saying that he wishes he wasn't a Malfoy. I _have _to be better."

"The things that five-year-old children say are not what they will always believe a year hence," said Narcissa, and shook her head when Draco opened his mouth to argue. "In this particular case, I think I have more experience than you do."

Draco fumed silently to himself. He had to admit that was probably true. But he didn't know what his mother expected. Not to worry so much, to trust her, but still to pay even closer attention than he had to his family's history, since he had somehow missed so much of it?

He had to deny that knowing he wasn't the first Malfoy to have a divorce made a shiver of something like cool water run down his spine. But he did wish that his parents could have told him earlier.

"Our offer still stands," said Narcissa, watching him with careful eyes. "To take Scorpius for a short time. Not to raise him permanently, Draco. I think you must have misunderstood us last time. I would never wish to take him away from his father for good. Only to give you a holiday, and a chance to think things over, and to remember what you care about beyond Scorpius. It is never a good idea to be so wrapped up in your child that you forget the rest of the world exists. The effect of such obsessive attention on the child can be to spoil them, or warp your priorities."

Draco had a stiff little speech all ready. He was going to tell his mother that he did care about other things, and that he would never spoil Scorpius. He was going to say that he wasn't warped. He was going to say that perhaps _he _could have used more of his parents' attention, since they had kept even basic facts about his heritage concealed from him.

But then he reconsidered. A new idea had unfurled inside his head, and it would use up the anger brewing in his stomach, and keep that anger from spilling out on his friends, or parents, or son. They hadn't done anything to merit that anger, not really (except perhaps his parents, in lying to him). Someone else had, and it was fitting Draco spend some more time pursuing and punishing him. It would be easier to do that if someone else was looking after Scorpius.

"You have decided to let us take him for a while," said his mother, who must have been watching Draco more closely than he'd realized. "Although I don't know why."

"There's something I'm interested in," said Draco with perfect truth, smiling at her. "It would require research and maybe even leaving the Manor for extended periods of time. I can't do that if Scorpius is here. Why _don't _you take him for a time, and see if he minds you and if you really don't spoil him?"

His mother was still. Then she said, "I know you have a reason behind this change of yours, but I do not trust it."

Draco spoke a few more sweet, flattering words. He had made his decision. Everyone else kept telling him that he needed time away from Scorpius? He would have it. He would go and satisfy one question, track down one person who had betrayed him, and take out his anger on that person. Then, well, then maybe he could come back and be a good father and a good Malfoy at the same time, and let Scorpius have some distance from him, and include some outside, adult interests in his life again.

He had to do something to get rid of this anger first, though.

And tracking down a liar who called himself Ethan Starfall and who had failed Draco when he needed him the most sounded like a good way to do that.


	10. A Hunted Target

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Ten—A Hunted Target_

Harry sighed and finally turned away from the window. He supposed that he shouldn't be surprised he'd received no response to his letter. Maybe he had stunned Malfoy. Maybe he needed time to think about the advice that Harry had offered him. Maybe he was in the middle of having a long talk with Scorpius right now, and he would send thanks in the morning

But since he had always written back almost immediately, it did bewilder Harry a little.

_I hope Malfoy and Scorpius are okay, _Harry thought as he went into his bedroom and started taking his clothes off.

Then he shook his head. Why wouldn't they be? They were behind the protection of powerful wards, and except for certain isolated times like today, when Malfoy said that his friend had taken Scorpius to Muggle London, they never ventured out. Malfoy had actually escaped suspicion for a crime or two, because the people who'd reported him breaking into their houses or trying to torture them apparently didn't know he was practically a recluse. Their stories always broke down when the Aurors investigated.

_If anything, I should be feeling sorry for myself, _Harry decided drowsily as he slid into bed. _All those applications to get through. And all those _horrible _essays. At least I know I wrote better than that when I was their age. Hermione wouldn't have tolerated anything less…_

He slid into sleep slowly, one part of him still wondering about Malfoy, the rest of him concentrated on those Auror trainee applications that he would have to get through tomorrow.

* * *

Draco paused one more time before he went into the Leaky Cauldron, making sure that the glamour over his face was perfect. It was connected to the hood of his cloak, which meant that he had a backup; it was unlikely to dissipate unless someone yanked his cloak off first. And he would keep his hood up as much as possible.

But he would have to lower it _some _of the time to ask for information. That thought made Draco's guts flutter. He swallowed and kept walking as though nothing was wrong, avoiding two wizards who came in laughing behind him.

The pub was crowded; it seemed that even on a Thursday night, lots of people came here to drink and talk. Draco paused once, then made his way to a small table in a dark corner that was probably unpopular because of the lack of light. In this case, it was perfect. Draco sat down and spent a moment scrutinizing the crowd.

Some were pure-blood wizards he knew; he discarded them as a source of information at once. The chances that they would have heard of a Muggleborn wizard who'd been out of the country during the war were low. Besides, they were the sort who hadn't shown much sympathy to Malfoys since the war, and although Draco was in disguise, he didn't want to listen to insults against his family while he investigated.

A large pack of Aurors drinking near the front of the pub also made Draco curl his lip. They hadn't bothered him much since the first year or two after his trial, but Ethan had made a particular point of mentioning that he led a peaceful life. He wouldn't be working among them, and they probably wouldn't know him.

_Are you sure about that? Given that he lied about so much else._

Draco shifted restlessly. He noticed then that he was drawing a few curious looks, mostly from some warlocks who sat in the back of the pub, at a table opposite his that was almost blocked by the length of the bar. Draco lifted his chin and glared back. He didn't know if they could be a source of information or not, but he wasn't about to look weak in front of them.

The three warlocks spoke in sharp whispers among themselves for a moment, and then one of them stood up and walked towards Draco, stopping about a cloak-length from his table. He was a tall man with rangy muscles and the kind of wild black beard that warlocks favored, and he wore a dingy robe that was still embroidered with moons and stars. Draco sat there in silence and gave him no encouragement.

"Well met, brother," said the warlock at last.

Draco gave a start. _He thinks I'm a warlock?_

But his glamour did have a beard, and did wear a robe that had more mystical symbols on it than were common among most wizards anymore, and he had stalked in here and then sat glaring at everyone with no attempt to socialize. He supposed that a warlock was the least strange thing they could think him to be.

And he would go with it. "Brother," said Draco, cautiously, and let one hand drop behind the table as if he was touching his wand to make sure he still had it. "How are you?"

The warlock paused as if he was studying Draco. This might be the end of the pretense, Draco thought, and the beginning of a duel. If warlocks had any sort of strange code or signs they were supposed to pass between themselves, he didn't know what it was.

But then the man nodded and said, "My name is Moonstar. Will you join us?"

The similarity of the name to "Starfall" made Draco's blood jump for a moment, but then he reminded himself that plenty of wizards had that word in their last names. He considered it visibly for a second, then nodded and stood up. "As long as your companions have no objections," he said, looking at the warlocks in the corner for a second.

The warlock snorted a little and turned to walk Draco over to the table. "They'll learn to keep it to themselves, if they do. They're young, and still apprentices." He flashed Draco a grin that Draco thought was edged as a knife. "I command here."

_Do you? _Draco just nodded, though, and continued following Moonstar back to his table. There was a long moment before he sat down when the other two warlocks bristled at him, but they looked back and forth between him and Moonstar, and subsided in a few seconds. Draco could see that one of them had sandy hair and a long beard, and the other dark hair and no beard, but that was all he could make out. They kept their hoods pulled up, just like he had.

"Take a seat, brother, and tell us your name," said Moonstar, tugging out a chair for Draco.

Draco sat down, felt Moonstar nudge the chair back towards the table, and frowned a little. He thought he would still have plenty of space to get to his wand and back from the table if he needed to, but he was no longer sure. He did his best to keep his face calm and an expression of slightly superior disdain on his features.

"My name is Cometborn," said Draco, fabricating as he went along. He had thought of a different name for his glamoured self, but it wasn't one that would fit in well with warlocks. He remained silent after that, glancing from face to face.

Moonstar shrugged a second later, his smile easy. "I can't blame you for wanting to know names. These are my fellows Shadowskill and Velvetmask." The sandy-haired one and the dark-haired one nodded in turn. "What have you come here seeking?"

The answer was on the tip of Draco's tongue, and it was actually one that fit well with the persona he had adopted. "Vengeance."

Moonstar smiled a little more broadly and waved a hand towards the front of the pub. Several tankards floated over; Draco didn't know the foaming drink inside, but it was light brown and glinted with flecks of something dark floating near the top. Moonstar gave him the tankard and gestured for him to drink. Draco cast a nonverbal spell that would turn some of the drink invisible, and lifted it to his lips.

"On someone hard to find?" Moonstar asked, and Draco nodded, mouth busy with the small amount of the drink he had swallowed. "Well. You came to the right place, brother. Vengeance is our specialty."

"I know his name," said Draco, and put down the tankard in front of him. He thought Velvetmask smiled when he saw how much of the drink was apparently gone. If he was ignorant enough not to notice the spells Draco had used, that was a good thing, Draco told himself, and ignored the little thrill of danger that came from knowing Moonstar had definitely given him that big a mug on purpose. "But I do not know his current location, and even the name may be a lie. He wrote to me offering help with a problem. His advice did not work as he said it would."

"And you are left with the chaos of the problem to clean up?" Moonstar folded his hands and regarded Draco thoughtfully. "That can be a hard thing."

"In this case," said Draco, and he knew his voice was sufficiently grim to convince them when Shadowskill leaned a little away from him, "it might have rendered the problem unsolvable."

"Tell us the name, then," said Moonstar. "Even if it is false, so many people leave clues and traces in their false names of their real ones. They seem to be unable to resist using the same initials, or including a reference to their real names that they think is clever."

Draco smiled tightly. This was the part where he had to take a risk. He thought that Starfall hadn't revealed the truth about Draco's trouble with Scorpius to anyone, or it would be in the papers already, but so much about him was a lie. Draco had only his instincts, which had turned out to be less than reliable.

On the other hand, he also had his desire for vengeance, and so he murmured, "Ethan Starfall."

No instant recognition sprang into the eyes of the warlocks, at least. Moonstar looked inquiringly at his "brethren," who both shook their heads.

"The name makes him sound like a pure-blood," said Moonstar, and glanced at Draco. "Have you begun in that direction?"

Draco laughed, and let his bitterness color it. "I have some knowledge in that direction, yes. What I know is that no pure-blood family named Starfall exists. Of course, that does not mean that he is _not _a pure-blood." He had to suspect and doubt the most basic facts about Ethan, he was seeing now, however well-established they had seemed. "He did tell me, however, that he was unfamiliar with some aspects of pure-blood life, and that he had been out of the country during the war."

"That will make him easier to track down." Moonstar nodded, his gaze abstracted. Then he turned to Draco, and his face was as sharp as anyone could wish. "If we help you, there is the matter of payment."

Warlocks were mostly outcast wizards who had become alienated from regular wizarding society because of the extent to which they pursued Dark Arts, or poisons, or experimental breeding of magical creatures. Draco knew that the hard part of the task wouldn't be paying them, but finding something that they would accept he had a good reason for having.

After a moment of thought, he had it. "I have access—secret access—to a natural patch of bloodraven," he said. "I have changed my interests and no longer use the spells or potions that require bloodraven. Would that be enough payment?"

Moonstar tried to avoid the way his eyes widened, Draco thought, but it happened anyway. "It would indeed," he said, after a brief choke. "I didn't know there was any natural bloodraven left."

Draco smiled. Bloodraven was a combination of plant and stone, colored like a raven's wings, and only growing where the blood of a wizard had been spilled by a Muggle. It was an incredibly powerful Potions ingredient, and could sometimes be used to construct plague spells. Most of it had been claimed already, and while it could be made by means of another potion, artificial bloodraven was never as powerful as the real thing.

"I suspect that my ancestors treasured the secret on purpose," said Draco. "This is a secret I have by inheritance and truce, not through discovering it on my own." That much was true, since the bloodraven grew in a distant corner of the Malfoy grounds. "They never needed the wealth it could provide, preferring the power of the stone itself. But they are dead now, and I need my revenge more."

Moonstar nodded, but his eyes had sharpened again. "Then you are pure-blood yourself."

"Does that mean you will not make a bargain with me?" Draco let his voice grow cool. He had thought it wouldn't be a problem, since not many warlocks were Muggleborn, but if it was, and Moonstar had prejudices of his own…

"No," said Moonstar. "For the sake of bloodraven, there is little I will not dare." He leaned forwards. "We need to know more of this Ethan Starfall, and what else you have done to locate him. Something he has touched would be best."

"I left the letter he sent me at home," said Draco, which was true. He didn't have the last one, the one he'd torn up, but he did have all the others Ethan had sent him. "If we arrange a second meeting, however, then I'll bring it with me."

"We need any other details that you can give us, in its place," said Moonstar. "If we are to start tracking him and bring you the revenge you desire as soon as you desire it." His eyes burned at Draco.

Draco swallowed breathlessness. He had come here of his own free will, and made the alliance with the warlocks of his own free will. He couldn't back out now because he was beginning to suspect that the warlocks might do something…permanent to Ethan.

But he could at least make sure that he was there to watch the permanent thing. "I want his location," he said. "More than anything, I want to look into his lying face before I hurt him. I want the vengeance to be up-close and personal."

"We'll find him, then." Moonstar didn't look displeased, so Draco must not have thwarted the deep desire for violence that he thought Moonstar had. "But I can understand why you want to see him. Other details."

Draco settled down to tell them what he knew: the names of Ethan's wife and his children, little details about his hobbies and activities, the way that Ethan had spoken of his family, how he had first contacted him. He did not reveal details of the problem that had led him to contact Ethan in the first place, because that was private and his own. Besides, the warlocks might stare at him if they heard that he'd sought advice on child-rearing.

Moonstar did look up once in the middle of writing down what Draco told him, and murmur, "This concerns your family?"

"It does," said Draco, and stared him down.

Moonstar only considered him for a second, and then turned away, with a twitch of his lips that looked satisfied. Draco didn't know if he was happy because he thought Draco would be more likely to pay them if the matter was personal, or for some other reason.

It didn't matter. Not if they found Ethan for him. Not if Draco could use up this anger swirling around in him. He couldn't drive his friends and family away from him; he knew, when he calmed down, that they would still be there, and that he would need their help to raise Scorpius.

He didn't need Ethan's help. He didn't need anything from Ethan except the truth, and then a slow, crumbling repayment.

_That _part, he was looking forward to.

* * *

Harry slumped back on the couch and shook his head over the scribbled mess of an essay he was reading. It was hopeless, really. He had read essays by other second-years at Hogwarts, when he was a second-year, that had been written better.

He placed the essay in the steadily growing pile of rejected applications, and then sighed, stood up, and walked over to the cabinet in the corner where he kept his store of wines and whiskeys. Hermione would sometimes cock a disapproving eyebrow at him when she visited, but that was mainly because Ron did all his drinking out of her sight, Harry thought.

And Ron hadn't had as much time to drink since the arrival of his children. There was that.

It was a problem Harry would be glad to share.

He shook off the thought, and took out a bottle of golden wine that he'd received as a gift for proving that a stuffy pure-blood witch was actually innocent of the necromancy charge she'd been arrested for. Her note had said that it was wine made by fairies, brewed under full moons and to be saved for a special occasion.

Harry hesitated. Then he opened it anyway. This wasn't a special occasion, but it was as close to one as he thought he would get for a long time.

He hadn't written in his journal in days. Those were all the days he'd spent waiting for Malfoy's return letter. Apparently, writing as Ethan to someone else, letting Ethan out into the world even as just a name and a few details from his life, had drained the impulse that prompted Harry to practice being him.

_Maybe I shouldn't have done it. It's not like I couldn't have passed on Malfoy's letter to someone who had real experience raising children._

But he had experience with Teddy and Rose and Hugo, at least. He had lied because it was necessary to lie, because he had concealed even from most of the public who knew him as Harry Potter that he was now infertile, and who knew whether the person he could have given Malfoy's letter would stay sympathetic once they found out who they were writing to?

_I probably just did the best I could, and for a limited part that Malfoy needed me to play, _Harry told himself firmly as he poured the fairy wine into a glass. _Or maybe he hated my advice and he's never going to write to me again. Either way, it's his life and his son. And Ethan's life, if you want to think about it that way._

_Not mine. Never mine._

Harry tilted his head back and drained most of the glass at a gulp. At least the wine was indeed as sweet as the witch had promised him it was.

* * *

Draco had spent most of the time since he'd returned home wandering around the Manor, frowning into odd corners. It had taken him hours to realize what he was searching for.

_Scorpius. Life. Noise._

But Scorpius was with his parents, as agreed, for the next few weeks, so that Draco could be left free to hunt down Ethan Starfall. Not that his parents knew that, either. They only knew that Draco was focusing on something other than Scorpius and getting out of the Manor, and they were too relieved—or wise—to ask further questions.

Draco whirled and strode for the history library. What Moonstar had said about the false names people often adopted was burning in his mind. Maybe he could find something that resembled "Ethan Starfall" or an anagram of it among the genealogies his ancestors had collected.

This particular library had white shelves full of books that sparkled with silver and gilt on the spines, and windows that shed soft light on the chairs and the mantel there. Draco walked past the comfortable chairs and the ladder that could have brought him closer to the high shelves. He felt like doing everything by magic today. He held up his wand and muttered, "_Accio _genealogical books."

The shelf right above his head jumped, and then a huge cascade of books came down. Draco jumped hastily back, cast a spell to shield his head, and then started arranging the books. Most of them were old, but bound in thick leather, reinforced by charms, that would have prevented them taking any harm when they landed.

He looked first in the books that held the pure-blood names, of both living and dead families, beginning with S. It was true that Ethan had said he wasn't a pure-blood, and that Starfall wasn't a family name Draco was familiar with. It was also true that basted children sometimes despised their birth families with a passion, and that even some pure-blood names had died out and wouldn't have been part of Draco's regular education.

There had been a Starmirror family, cousins of the Blacks. There had been a Stargrass, but that had lasted just three generations, before the only child born to the family had been a Squib and the parents had exiled her to hide their disgrace. There were Starborns and Stargraces and Starmoons, which made Draco linger for a moment, as he wondered what references a certain warlock might be hiding with his name. Then he shook his head impatiently and passed on.

No Starfall. Not so much as a rumor or a trace or a breath of one. Draco sat back, frowning. Ethan's name must be real, then. Either that, or it had been a lie from the beginning and there was so such thing as a wizarding family named Starfall.

Draco searched a few other books, but desultorily. No, nothing there.

Well, none of the books were recent. If a Muggleborn family had been started in the past generation or two, the books wouldn't have recorded it.

But there was a place that would have, even if that family, too, had been only a brief flourishing. And the same place kept records of emigrations out of the wizarding world, and petitions for entrance or re-entrance into Britain's wizarding community, and marriages. Ethan's marriage and wife couldn't be a lie. Draco knew that he spoke, at least, from the long experience of raising children. Maybe Draco could find a record of his children if not of the man himself.

He returned the genealogical books to their shelves and went back to his study. He needed to write a letter to the Ministry Records Division, and make it both intriguing enough that he would receive permission to read the records and non-threatening enough that they wouldn't carry his story to the Aurors or the newspapers. Few people visited the Records Division. Most pure-bloods had the stories of the only marriages, deaths, and births that mattered to them on their own shelves or in their heads. Most Muggleborns didn't care. Most historians needed more than the bare facts that the Division stored for their research.

But right now, Draco thought they might be his salvation.

_Ethan. If you're still out there, under whatever name, I'm going to find you. And I'm going to ask you why the fuck you bothered to write to me in the first place._

_And then I'm going to do some other things._


	11. A Desperate Choice

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Eleven—A Desperate Choice_

Harry slapped the stack of applications down on Kingsley's desk, and leaned back in his chair with his arms folded. "I expect you to send me better-written essays next time."

"Very good, Harry," said Kingsley, seeming determined to ignore the larger pile of rejected applications in favor of looking at the much smaller pile of trainees Harry had approved to join the class. "You got through these much faster than Auror Weasley did when I appointed him to comb through them."

"You got _Ron _involved?" Harry shuddered a little at the vision of all the different dangers the applications would have encountered in Ron's house, from Rose throwing up on them to being shuffled into and lost among Hermione's legal papers. "I can see why you were so eager for a different Auror to take them up."

"Since you got through them so fast," Kingsley said, still serene, "here's the next lot." And he handed over another pile of parchment that he continued to hold in the air when Harry just sat there with his arms folded, in betrayal, and refused to take them.

"You've got to be _kidding_," said Harry, finally flipping through to one of the essays and staring at the blotted, straggling words in silent horror. "There should be a rule that you at least have to write _legibly_."

"Oh, you can reject any that you can't read," Kingsley informed him, and then waved towards the door of the office. "Off you go. I expect those back in a few days at the latest, based on your record with the first group."

Harry groaned and stood up. He thought about limping from the room, but his leg really was fully-healed, and the last thing he wanted was for Kingsley to think that he needed to keep Harry on desk duty even longer.

He did allow some of his mutters to be audible as he walked out of the office, but Kingsley only laughed.

Because he was so busy juggling the applications, Harry didn't really watch where he was going. Someone told him to, in a voice so icy that Harry instinctively grabbed at all the paper and took a step back.

Draco Malfoy stared at him. Harry felt his insides chill the way they had on the first day that passed without a letter replying to Ethan.

For a second, he thought for sure Malfoy had come to question him about Ethan, and his heart stuttered anxiously to life. If there was a single _chance _that Malfoy had connected Harry to Ethan, then Harry would have to get him alone and use a Memory Charm on him, and that was always risky, especially for someone like Harry who wasn't good at performing them under pressure—

"Out of my way, _Potter_."

Then Harry noticed the frowning woman in the off-white robes of the Ministry Records office waiting down the corridor, and made the connection. Malfoy wasn't here to see him at all. He had come to look into the Records for some obscure reason.

"Sorry, right," Harry said. Ron would have been ashamed of him for responding to Malfoy so abjectly, he knew, but Ron wasn't here, and he didn't know the chaos of thoughts and feelings whirling through Harry's head. Harry just stepped aside and watched in silence as Malfoy sneered at him and walked on after the Records officer.

Malfoy walked as though he had a stick up his arse, but Harry thought he had always done that. More significant was the fact that he glared around more or less impartially, and practically stalked, bending forwards as though the only thing that mattered was getting to the Records division.

_What does he want there?_ Harry thought, shaking his head. He would have believed that all the Malfoys' genealogical records were under the Malfoys' direct control. If they needed to look up some record of a genetic disease or a birth to make sure it wasn't a bastard one—the purposes that brought the people who did come to the Records division there—then they wouldn't have wanted anyone else to know they were doing it.

_Unless he's not looking up things on _Malfoys…

Harry felt the grip of the ice on his chest again. He did walk normally back to his office, and put the pile of applications down on his desk and made sure they wouldn't tip. Then he sank back into his chair, and trembled.

Malfoy would find no Ethan Starfall in the Records Division, of course. But what if he looked up names like Lily and James? What if he was smart enough to research connections between them other than those of siblings?

Once he started down that route, surely it wouldn't take him long to remember Lily and James Potter.

_Stop it, _Harry knew Hermione would say if she could see him now. _You have no idea what he'll find or even what he's here for. It could be something entirely different. And if he does find out, so what? You haven't stolen anything from him or tricked him into doing something illegal. He would have no case against you._

Harry knew that his panic over Ethan _wasn't _rational, any more than writhing about Ethan's life in the first place was. But he had lost his ability to have children, and Ethan's imagined children were what he had instead. It was the reason he'd never told his friends about his journal. Maybe they would have understood eventually, but the flash of pity in their eyes when he first talked about it would have been intolerable. And God knew what Ginny's expression would have been when _she _heard.

The knowledge of Ethan in Malfoy's hands could hurt him more than that. At least none of his friends would actually go to the papers.

Harry bowed his head and clutched his hair with two hands. Right now, he would get nowhere by sitting there and letting his brain whirl along without any checks on it. It would only panic him. He had to think about this the way he would an Auror case, and come up with strategies that would let him tackle it.

What knowledge had he had given Malfoy about Ethan? The names of his imaginary children, his imaginary wife, his imaginary family. The information that Ethan didn't care for the pure-blood ways and hadn't fought in the war. Sympathy for both Malfoy and Scorpius.

Except for the fact that Ethan wasn't pure-blood, and maybe the names of James and Lily, there was nothing there that Ethan had in common with Harry Potter. Malfoy was probably not going to look in the ranks of prominent war heroes for him. And his wife was imaginary, and Malfoy knew well enough that _Harry Potter _wasn't sympathetic to him.

Harry's breathing slowed. All right, he could do this. He didn't think Malfoy would come close to him, and if he did, then he had a plan to handle it. All he had to do was deny that he was Ethan Starfall. It wasn't like Malfoy could break into his house and find the journals and prove him wrong that way.

_All the same, strengthening my wards might not be a bad idea._

* * *

"You haven't found anything?"

Draco started with irritation at the voice of the Ministry Records worker; he had to struggle to remember her name for a moment. Jessamyn, that was it. Jessamyn Honeyglide.

"No," he said abruptly. He didn't care what he looked like. She had seen that he was deep in research, and interrupted him anyway. "I haven't found anything, but I'd like another hour to look, at least." He knew it was hours until the Records Division closed.

That got him a long, careful glance from Honeyglide that he didn't like at all, but she bowed calmly and turned away. Draco cursed and looked back at the books in front of him, but the rhythm was broken. He had thought he was drawing near some knowledge of Starfall. Some pattern to the (undeniably false) name was starting to blossom in front of him, and now—

Nothing.

With a growl, Draco picked up the one piece of paper he had found that contained the name Starfall. Apparently a thief of some renown had been active when Draco was a child. He'd actually walked away with half the Galleons that the Ministry intended to give their employees in broad daylight. He'd finally been caught, but he would only call himself Starfall, and no one else could find out anything else on him.

_Muggleborn, of course. _That fit "Ethan's" presumed background.

Starfall had gone to Azkaban, and died after a few years there. The notes on his case said that was to be expected; he had seemed particularly sensitive to Dementors, and had broken down only when he heard what his sentence would be.

Draco strained again after the elusive thought. Then he glanced down at the parchment that was lying under the Starfall one, and remembered.

One of the apothecaries who had bought stolen Potions ingredients from Starfall was named Ethan Summerfield.

Together, they didn't make much. But Draco knew that he didn't _need _much. He had already determined that there was no wizard named Starfall except that dead thief. Simple search spells that the Records Division apparently used all the time had determined that much.

So. No other person using the alias Starfall. No Muggleborn who had decided to change that to his name so he would sound more wizardly and better able to fit into their society. No forgotten pure-blood family that had lasted only a few generations.

Draco _knew _that the name Starfall was the greatest clue he had, and this was too great to a coincidence, especially since Ethan Summerfield was one of the few people who'd traded with Starfall that they'd been able to catch. The person who had written to him must have known about those people and put their names together. It was like Moonstar had said. The false names that people chose would reveal a great deal about their true origins.

_ But if Starfall had no relatives, what origins would those be?_

Draco shook his head dismissively. Moonstar had harped on the false names concealing real _names_, but Moonstar was something of a fool, in the way that most practicing warlocks were. It didn't mean that the person who had picked this name was related to Starfall, or even Summerfield, although that was a connection Draco would certainly check. It would mean only that it was someone who had access to the trial records, and had probably been intimately involved in the trial from beginning to end.

That meant one thing, to Draco.

_An Auror. _

It would be like an Auror to seek out Draco Malfoy, even when he had done nothing Dark in years, and decide that he needed to humiliate the Malfoy family for the good of wizarding society. Draco didn't know exactly how the Auror would _justify _that, but he didn't know how the Aurors had ever justified the raids they made on his house, either. They would find some way. Whoever this was had probably still got Draco's letter by chance, but what a chance for vengeance it was.

Draco was convinced of his theory. Everything fit. Everything made sense.

He didn't know how soon he would be able to repeat his trip to the Records Division, however, and it sounded as though they were already getting impatient with him. So he decided to look up the other names he had. Anne was perhaps too common to reveal much, and so was James—as both a first and last name—and there were far too many children named Albus in the wake of the war to count.

But…

"_Expleo Lily_."

For a second, books and papers ruffled across the room, and then they came flying towards him. Draco raised the modified Shield Charm that Honeyglide had taught him, and they stopped short of hitting him. They settled obediently onto the edge of the desk, and Draco leaned forwards, panting a little with the thrill of the hunt.

Yes. As he'd thought. There were few witches named Lily, and the references were small enough to be manageable.

He began to thumb through the books, quickly looking through and discarding the references to witches named Lily (and the occasional family with Lily as part of their name) that he knew were related to him. Those generations of Blacks, Malfoy's, even one Weasley, had been dead for years. In the more recent books, he began to slow down and spend more time looking.

There was still a small mountain of references to sort through, though, mostly in newspapers. Draco frowned, curious, and turned one over.

His breath caught in his throat, and he leaned over to look at the photograph of Lily Potter staring up at him from a belated birth announcement. The paper hadn't reported on the birth of Harry Potter at the time he was actually born, the story explained, because his parents were living in hiding. But now they were eager to repair the gap and talk all about the parents of their "newest hero."

Draco swallowed and splayed out his hand so he could see just the name, without the picture distracting him. James. And Lily.

_That_ had been the nagging sense of familiarity he had thought of and couldn't name when he was reading Starfall's letters. What were the odds that one person in the wizarding world would have two children named after members of Harry Potter's family?

Draco considered, for a second, whether this expressed some intricate code where the two names interacted with the names of the criminals he'd already discovered. But he discarded the notion almost at once. It seemed likelier that his first theory was correct: "Ethan" was an Auror, with access to the criminal records and with Harry Potter constantly before his eyes, and from that he had constructed his identity.

Draco rose gracefully to his feet and sent the records concerning people named Lily back to their shelves with a flick of his wand.

None of that meant he wouldn't talk to Potter. Potter might know which Auror was crazy enough to do this. And the more information he had on Starfall, the better.

* * *

Harry thought he did very well when Malfoy suddenly appeared in his office doorway. He had no plan more advanced than staring, because he had convinced himself it would be foolish for Malfoy to come to him when he had simply bumped into Harry on his way through the corridors to the Records Division.

_On the other hand, maybe he's come about that. Careful, now. _Harry laid his hands open on the desk, and tried to make his face as friendly as possible. "Is something wrong?"

"Wrong? No. Not exactly." Malfoy eased into the office, looking around as if searching for the contamination of Ron's presence. Harry found it an effort to maintain his friendly mask. In person, Malfoy was a lot different from the desperate father who had written to Harry begging for help. "I want to know what you know about someone using the names of your parents as false names. And what you know about Starfall and Ethan Summerfield."

Harry blinked and shook his head. Again, he was proud of himself. "Using the names of my parents as false names? Have there been crimes committed in the names of James and Lily Potter?" He wouldn't touch the names Starfall or Ethan Summerfield—not that he knew who that was—unless he had no choice.

Malfoy snapped his head around, glaring. "Of _course _you would assume that I was involved in a crime," he muttered, sounding disgusted. "Of _course_."

"You mentioned false names," said Harry, and shoved his chair back from his desk in case he needed to move quickly. "I assumed you were talking about crime because it's natural to do so. What are you muttering about?"

Malfoy stood straight. "Someone has been writing to me, calling himself Ethan Starfall," he said crisply. "He lied to me, and nearly tricked me into doing something that I might have regretted for the rest of my life. He said that he had children named James and Lily. It seems rather a coincidence to me that someone would pick both those names accidentally. Do you know who this is?"

Such a swirl of thoughts conflicted and collided in Harry that he thought he might blurt something out he didn't mean to.

_I never tried to trick you. Arse. I should have known better than to try and help you, should have known you wouldn't change and you would always take someone trying to help you in the worst light possible._

_Who's Starfall? He found someone named Starfall? Did I condemn them to suffering from him?_

_I shouldn't have used the names James and Lily for my children, either. What a fool I was._

Harry banished the last thought—they were the names of Ethan's children, and not his—subdued the impulse to speak the first one, and found an acceptable way of voicing the second. "I don't know the name Ethan Starfall. You mentioned that he was connected to Ethan Summerfield? I might be able to research that and find out who he is."

Malfoy made an impatient gesture and leaned forwards to put his hands on Harry's desk. "I already did the research for you. One of _your _trial records says that Starfall is a thief who died in Azkaban, and Ethan Summerfield is one of the people who bought his stolen goods. You can't tell me that that's a coincidence."

Harry shook his head. "That case was before my time. You should talk to one of the Aurors who investigated it and see what they say."

"I came to you in the first place because they were also using the names of your _parents. _I thought you would be more interested in that." Malfoy spoke as slowly as though Harry was an idiot.

_Well, maybe I am, to think that there was any way I could have helped _him.

Harry simply bit his lip and waved a hand that he hoped made him seem a little curious—not enough for Malfoy to pursue. "It's strange. But you haven't uncovered any evidence of a plot striking at me, right?"

Malfoy tensed as though he was going to spring like a cat. "You're selfish enough to make everything about yourself," he whispered. "I just clearly told you that this was a plot directed at _me_."

Harry wanted to whang his head against the edge of the desk. Yes, it really had been a mistake for them to get involved with each other.

"I have no idea who it is." Harry sighed. "I have no idea why someone would want to use the names of my parents as the names of false children, and I have no idea what it would accomplish, anyway. You say these names were used in private correspondence to you?"

Malfoy nodded, still tense and deadly motionless other than the small movement of his head.

"Then that makes it even stranger," Harry said. "This person isn't marching through the street proclaiming that they tricked you." _As if Ethan would._ "They aren't trying to hunt you down. Why would they think that using private letters was a means to damage you at all?"

"He lied to me," Malfoy repeated. "He nearly tricked me into doing something I regretted." He was watching Harry as if he assumed that those words were unfamiliar to him.

Harry folded his arms. "What was the thing? What were the lies? Maybe I could help you more if I knew that."

Malfoy snapped himself upright. Harry had seen a dragon do that right before it breathed fire, once. "I don't want to tell you that."

"Fine," said Harry. With an effort, he made his voice not snap. "But it's going to be hard to tell what's going on with this person using the names of my parents, I'll tell you that. They're doing it in private correspondence with you, someone I haven't talked to since the war, and you won't even tell me what the bloody goal was."

"Is," said Malfoy, and his face looked like a skull. "I have reason to think that they're trying to trick me still, and this is an ongoing struggle, the outcome of which is still in doubt."

_Does he listen to himself? _But given that Malfoy had spoken all that load of bollocks with a straight face, Harry decided the answer was probably "no."

"Fine," Harry repeated. "If you don't want to give me more details, then I can't help you. That's how Aurors investigate, is use of details," he added, when Malfoy looked at him as if he was going to explode. "I can't do that in the absence of them. Good day. I hope you find out who's doing this to you."

_And strangely, _Harry thought as he faced his desk again, _that part's even sincere. I know who's doing it to him. His own strange and paranoid brain._

He hadn't realized how caught up in his delusions Malfoy was. He had thought Malfoy probably sat alone in his house all day, brooding on pure-blood traditions and the right way to raise his son, but he hadn't realized before now that that kind of brooding would, of course, drive a person insane.

"I thought you would care more, Potter." Malfoy's voice sounded like gurgling in the back of his throat.

"You've undermined my ability to care," Harry replied, still not looking up from the report in front of him. "I don't see how this thing or person is a danger to me. I wish you luck in finding him and getting rid of the fear. That's all I can really say."

Malfoy slammed the door on his way out of the office. Harry shook his head. He could imagine lots of ways that things could be worse, which hadn't been true when Malfoy had first shown up. Ron could have been there. Malfoy could have leaped immediately to the conclusion that Ethan was Harry because no one else would have reason to use those names.

Harry could have gone on writing to Malfoy as Ethan, convinced that he could help him, and not knowing that he was speaking into the ears of a madman.

_Maybe I ought to tell the Mind-Healers about him, _Harry thought idly. But it stayed an idle thought. Malfoy could probably be perfectly sane in front of other people, except when he was rabbiting on about Ethan, or he would have been locked up before now.

_Not my problem._

Harry felt light, cleansed. Maybe now, he could reclaim Ethan's voice, and start writing in his journal as him again. He didn't have the weight of or responsibility for Malfoy hanging on his shoulders anymore. He still felt sorry for Scorpius, but he had no legal right to intervene and take the child away. Maybe the best he could do was a cryptic letter to Malfoy's parents, warning them to watch out for their grandson. They probably would anyway.

_Yes, I'm well out of that._

* * *

Draco leaned against the wall of the corridor outside Potter's office, his breath coming in quick pants and his eyes stinging. No one passed by, and so Draco didn't have to dash the threatening tears away or straighten up or any of that nonsense.

_Potter knows something. He must. The way he looked away from me and got angry when I wouldn't tell him the details was too suspicious._

Draco straightened. He would find some way to get the details. Not all _three _of the warlocks he had met needed to focus on Ethan, surely? He could send one of them after Potter and get the details that way.

He went home, meditating on whether to choose Velvetmask or Shadowskill for that particular offer, only to find a letter from Moonstar waiting for him on his desk. He picked it up with shaking hands and turned it over.

_I hate Ethan. I hate him for reducing me to this. If this obsession is gone, if I just know…then maybe I can go back to my normal life and being a good dad to Scorpius._

He tore open the letter.


	12. May It Burn

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Twelve—May It Burn_

Draco sat staring into the fire. Now and then, he reached out for Moonstar's letter and lifted it back to his eyes, and stared at that instead.

It was nothing except a short explanation of how they had investigated Ethan's letter, and what it had told them about the magical signatures of the people who had touched it. Based on the strength of those signatures and one of the Dark rituals that warlocks used and most other people didn't, they could come up with names.

And then, below the explanation, were the names.

There was Draco's name. The name of someone who Moonstar had confirmed was merely the wizard who sold parchment in Diagon Alley. And then, beneath that…

_Harry Potter._

Draco looked back into the fire. He could feel the slow, mechanical turns of his neck ticking along, contrasting with the flames in the back of his mind. The flames wanted to spring out and burn everything.

But Draco hadn't yet decided what the best way for them to do that was. Burn in the back of his mind until he had succeeded in subduing them somewhat, and then he could unleash them against Potter? Or should he send Moonstar and his fellows after Harry Potter? Draco had no doubt that Moonstar would be willing to do that, if Draco made the fee high enough. And perhaps mad warlocks were better suited to handle a mad Auror.

Potter had to be mad. Why else would he have written to him as Ethan Starfall when Draco had done nothing to him since the war?

_I should have known when I saw the names he chose for his children._

But Draco had still believed that Ethan _had _children, and didn't have war experience, that the names were the only fake things he had put in his letter. He had never believed that Ethan didn't exist, only that he didn't exist the way he had been presented on paper to Draco.

And in a way, he was right. _Someone _had to use the quill and ink. That someone was Potter.

Draco stood. He could feel his hand trembling, and he knew he was probably going to fling the drink he held. He had managed to sit there sipping so far and not do that, but he knew himself. He knew the fire, the signs that he was going to explode. It hadn't happened in a long time, but it was going to happen now.

And there was really only one solution for the flames that burned in the back of his mind. That solution was to let them burn themselves. He might have been content to send Moonstar and the rest to punish Potter if he was someone else. But this was _personal_. It had to be, for Potter to make up such elaborate lies about children and a wife and the rest.

_Did he send me bad advice on purpose? What if the advice only worked by coincidence, or because of the way I applied it? What if he intended to ruin my son, or my relationship with my son?_

Draco's hands sank into the arms of his chair. Oh, yes, he wanted answers almost more than he wanted Potter to pay. And he would be sure to ask him those things, before he attacked him.

Then he paused again, and there was a new color among the flames in his mind, cold-looking blue. But blue fire was among the hottest flames of all, and it could change and damage quite a bit.

_The times that I fought against Potter in the past, I lost. Even if I come in with surprise on my side, I might not win._

That decided, Draco reached for a quill and began to write the letter to Moonstar after all. Moonstar would know both the best place to attack Potter and the best method of getting away with it.

And if Draco had to give up more than bloodraven to secure the services of the warlocks, he would. Where Malfoy honor was at stake, no price could be too high.

* * *

Harry grimaced at the silence of the Ministry around him as the lift slowly rose from the Department of Mysteries. He had known it was late, but the silence told him so in an unpleasant way. He'd been supposed to have dinner with Ron and Hermione, and although the summons from the Unspeakables had come in time for him to firecall Ron and warn him that he was likely to be late, he doubted the food was even edible now. He hoped they'd gone ahead and eaten without him.

He walked out of the lift and hastily towards the entrance from the Ministry. Some of the time, he would Floo, but Ron and Hermione's Floo network connection was having problems and still hadn't been repaired. Faster just to Apparate.

He came out of the entrance into the small alley that shielded it from prying Muggle eyes, and took one step forwards.

The Net Curse sprang around him, fluttering down with rocks attached to the meshes that would bind him to the ground, but Harry was already moving, Auror instinct spurring him into a roll, and he came up with all his instincts screaming at him and his wand in his hand.

Three dark shapes emerged out of the alley.

Harry breathed out a soft curse as the Suggestion Charm on his mind flicked and feathered apart at the same time. Ron and Hermione's Floo connection wasn't having a problem. Someone had put that idea into his mind to ensure that he would come out here tonight and pose an easier target for attackers.

He had to admire their planning, if not the fact that he was its victim.

_They probably cast the Suggestion Charm on me in the Department of Mysteries, _he thought, as he rolled to his feet and raised a shield. _I wouldn't notice one more cloaked figure down there—_

Then he had to shove such thoughts firmly out of his mind, if he was going to _survive_.

There were already illusions springing to life out of the corner of his eye, illusions that were bursts of color and bursts of sound, meant to distract him and hold him down, make him focus on those instead of his attackers. Harry impatiently raised the Blinder Charm. It would dismiss from his attention anything with them in the alley that didn't have a physical body.

The warlocks in front of him paused. They seemed to have really expected their illusions to work, which was stupid of them. They came in more slowly this time, and Harry took the chance to raise even more shields around himself.

The lead warlock stopped a few meters from Harry and nodded as though in respect to a strong opponent. "We weren't instructed to kill you," he called. "You might as well surrender and spare yourself a little pain. You can't strike at us from within those shields, anyway."

_Instructed? _Harry knew some warlocks worked as mercenaries for hire, or what essentially amounted to the same thing; they would collect information or beat people up if the payment was high enough. Most of the time, though, they were as likely to betray their employers as to carry through on their contracts. They wanted valuable information or magic the employers had more than they wanted to inflict pain.

But the warlock's comment revealed more interesting things than just that they were working for someone else. They didn't seem all that experienced in the ways of battle.

With a non-verbal curse, Harry burst his shields and turned them into razor-sharp, flying fragment weapons. One of the warlocks behind the lead one went down with a cry, scratching at his face. Harry hoped he'd got one right in the eyes.

The other two managed to dodge, and grimly raised their weapons. They knew the contest was serious, now. They would be less inclined to give or receive mercy. And warlocks sometimes knew Dark spells that not many people had studied.

_But they don't often engage with a fully-trained Auror, either, _Harry thought, and went grimly into combat.

* * *

Draco, standing under a Disillusionment Charm in the side of the alley, and behind a bubble shield that would protect him from flying weapons, found himself frozen to the spot as he watched Potter take on Moonstar and Velvetmask. Shadowskill lay motionless on the ground. Draco had intended to look and see if he was dead or alive, because surely Moonstar would charge him more if he was dead.

But he couldn't take his eyes from Potter.

Potter was the center of a whirling, flying barrage of spells. He never held _still _long enough for Moonstar or Velvetmask to take good aim. Instead, he danced and turned, and ribbons of fire and fingers of ice and gusts of wind snapped out from him, aiming at limbs to break them, wands to snap them, robes to scatter them and trip up the warlocks.

Already, Velvetmask had tripped twice, and there was blood flowing from what looked like a broken nose as well as a shallow cut above his eyes. Moonstar had been more cautious or better or luckier, but he did have a limp. He could match Potter whirl for whirl, though, and he had spells that quenched the fire or melted the ice or blocked the wind.

It hadn't escaped Draco's notice, however, that he was fighting entirely on the defensive.

_So much for the great warlocks I hired, _Draco thought in scorn, and touched his own wand. What had been unthinkable before might become necessary now. He might need to go into battle on his own against Potter.

The flames in the back of his mind sprang up and began burning eagerly at the thought.

There was a snap and a shriek. Potter had used another gust of wind to fling Velvetmask back into a wall, and had broken his arm, and then Summoned his wand away from him when he tried to retaliate. There could be no doubt that Velvetmask was out of the fight.

Moonstar immediately turned his back on his own fellow warlock and raised his wand against Potter. There was a long stream of something coming out of the wand, something that wavered back and forth. Draco had no idea what it was, and no time to wait. Potter was watching Moonstar carefully, searching for some sign that the spell was about to strike. It was probably a serious one.

Draco broke from his concealment, charging forwards, and launched the hardest curse he could think of, the Blasting Curse, right at the middle of Potter's back.

Potter, _damn him, _dropped to his knees and let his head fall back. The curse sped above him and smashed into Moonstar. His wavering yellow spell seemed to take the brunt of some of it, but it was still enough to stagger him back and spin him around.

Potter leaped to his feet and whirled to face Draco.

He seemed to pause for a moment, perhaps fooled by the way that the Disillusionment Charm blended in with its surroundings, and this time Draco tried a spell that would turn the stone beneath Potter's feet to ice and make him slide. Potter countered it with a charm that Draco had never heard before; he only knew it was the countercharm because he could feel the magic seize hold of his and throw it backwards, and the ground remained cobblestones and not ice. Then Potter charged.

Draco tried to skip out of the way. The alley was too narrow. Potter's shoulder caught him in the gut and hurled him to the ground. Draco writhed there, trying to get his breath, while Potter dropped to a neat kneel on his chest and cast a _Finite _on the Disillusionment Charm.

"Malfoy?" Potter whispered the word in what sounded like disbelief.

Draco opened his eyes to glare at him, and saw Moonstar looming beyond Potter's shoulder. He tried to keep his face perfectly still, so that Moonstar could strike.

He wasn't successful, or Potter was too well-trained. He spun on the spot, making Draco grunt as his knees pressed into all sorts of delicate places. Potter's wand snapped out, and not even Moonstar could evade a Stunner that close. His eyes crossed, and he fell.

Draco tried to get his breath and gasp in outrage, but Potter spun back around, and now he was kneeling in place, his wand resting above Draco's pulse and his expression still bewildered.

"What the _fuck _are you doing?" Potter breathed.

"I know you're Ethan Starfall."

Draco swung the words without thinking about them, as a blunt tool, and had the satisfaction of seeing Potter's face pale as he swayed in place. Draco tried to rise against him, to push him off. Potter looked weaker now than he had since he'd first attacked Draco. Draco knew exactly where his wand was, and how to take it.

But Potter slammed his shoulders back into the stone, and there was a terrifying wildness in his face now that made Draco cower instinctively. He was furious and ashamed a moment later, but the time when he could have pretended not to be afraid was past.

"What do _you_ know?" Potter gave him a single contemptuous look, his eyes so furious that Draco held still just from that. "You have no idea what I've said—what I sacrificed—"

"I know that you don't have a wife and children," Draco said, determined to salvage something out of this. He obviously wasn't going to get to hold Potter helpless and make him listen to Draco like he'd planned, but he could inflict mental pain for some of the like pain that Potter had inflicted on him. "I know that you don't have any experience raising children. I know that you wrote to me under false pretenses, and that's worse than a false _name_. Do you have any idea how could you have harmed Scorpius? Do you have any idea how you could have harmed _me_?"

Potter stared at him, and then laughed, once. The sound was as wild as his eyes. "You sit there and pretend to be rational? _You _were the one who hired three warlocks to attack me in a darkened alley!"

_That didn't work out the way I hoped. _But now anger was rising to drive back Draco's fear, and he at least had an answer for that. "I wanted you to pay. I refuse to be the butt of your joke—"

"Is that what you think it was?" Abruptly, Potter let him go.

Draco didn't try to stand up. He had taken a pretty hard fall, and he didn't know if Potter, who was obviously mental, would change his mind and lunge at him in a second.

But Potter didn't seem interested in doing that. Instead, he stood up and paced back and forth, shaking his head and swearing to himself.

Draco propped himself up on one elbow and stared. He didn't know what was going on. He wondered if anyone did, or if he could have walked around the world and found nothing except people who would agree that Potter was mental.

Potter abruptly turned back towards him and gave a complicated motion that seemed to involve not only his arms but the rest of his body. "It wasn't a joke," he said. "It was a misguided attempt to _help _you. I see now that I shouldn't have bothered. You're still the same self-centered berk that you always were. The minute you found something you didn't like in what I'd wrote, you dedicated yourself to revenge, didn't you?" Potter's voice was low and passionate, his arms folded as if he was cold. "You're the same you always were, and I feel sorry for your son. That's all."

He turned his back. Draco waited to see what kind of curse he would come up with next; if there was anyone who would know the kinds of curses that could be fired over your shoulder without looking back at your enemy, it was Potter.

But he kept walking, waving his wand over the stunned warlocks that Draco had hired, and the truth hit Draco like a broken wall. Potter was walking away. He would leave Draco here, and he expected Draco not to strike back. To _accept it_.

Rage like nothing Draco had known, hot and dark as rushing poison, welled up in him.

_He thinks I'm a venomous serpent and no good, does he? He ought to know that a snake strikes again and again until you kill it._

More silently than he had done anything in his life, Draco rose to his feet. His stomach and head still hurt, but the rage was giving him strength now, pouring through him like a painkilling potion.

When he was in the right position, he lunged and grabbed his wand from the ground, and then he was going straight at Potter's back in a long rush, beautiful and free, as hard as the stones beneath him.

And he aimed his curse at the base of Potter's spine, and his rage made him choose the right one. "_Frango dorsum!_"

* * *

Harry was swimming in confusion and misery, so much emotion filling him that he felt ill. This wasn't ever the way that he would have chosen to have Malfoy find out the truth, if he was going to find out at all. Obviously, since Malfoy was insane, Harry would have preferred that he didn't find out, but there were good ways and bad ways.

_I hurt him. And yeah, some of it wasn't my fault, because he would have taken it badly no matter what, but I could have passed the letter on to someone else. I chose to interfere. I chose to approach him._

Then he heard the Back-Breaking Curse flying at him.

Lightning consumed his sympathy, his weariness, his uncertainty. This was battle, and that was an enemy. He dropped to his knees and let the curse fly over him and detonate harmlessly against the opposite wall. Then he stood and turned.

Malfoy was in the middle of the alley with a faint frown on his face and nowhere to hide.

"_Aranea_," said Harry, flipping his wand up and spinning out a curse he would never normally use, his mind running on wildness, on battle instinct, not thinking at all.

Malfoy flew backwards, the wand ripped from his hand, dangling in thick, sticky strands of spiders' web against the alley wall. Harry stalked after him. Malfoy's wand had dropped next to the wall, beneath the lowest strand of the web. Harry gave it an indifferent glance, considered stepping on it, and then looked away. He didn't need to be that petty.

Instead, he leaned in until his nose was an inch away from Malfoy's, nearly becoming stuck in the web himself.

"Do you know what could have happened tonight?" he whispered. "The warlocks you _chose _could have killed me. You could have hurt me. You could have committed murder, and for nothing but your stupid _pride_. You could have paralyzed me with that curse. Is that worth it, Malfoy, for the sake of your pride? Your stubbornness? Your idiocy?"

Malfoy blinked a few times, and then even that stopped, as the web gripped his eyelids. Harry laughed harshly, watching Malfoy twitch. He wanted to flinch away, probably now more than ever that he could no longer see Harry clearly. Harry wouldn't let him.

"How does it feel to be helpless, then?" Harry asked. "The way you were trying to make me? This isn't about your son or even about your indignation that I tricked you. This is pure and simple _rage_." He lifted his wand and touched it as near to Malfoy's right ear as he could without actually touching the web. "Addicting, isn't it? It makes you feel like you're the one on the top of the world and everyone else should be begging _your _permission. Doesn't it?"

Malfoy, of course, said nothing. His mouth was held partially open; the web was stuck to his tongue. Harry pulled back, to the place where he judged those caught and slit eyes would probably see him the best.

"You have no idea what you almost did," Harry said. "Even if you believed it was a prank, you were going to _murder _me." He discovered he was shaking, the way he hadn't once done in his battle with the warlocks. "What the _fuck _is wrong with you? What the _fuck_? Being taunted—even if I didn't mean to do that—is worth killing to you now, when nothing used to be worth that?"

Malfoy gave a muffled kick. Maybe a muffled scream, too.

"If you'd ended my life," Harry said softly, "it would have been the end of your life, too. Did you consider that? It wouldn't have been hard to find out who you were. I kept your letters. When they went through my effects, they'd find them, and it wouldn't have been hard to think that you might hate me enough to kill me. Ron would lead that hunt with _particular _vengeance. Then you'd be in Azkaban, and your son would have no father. Did you ever think of that?"

Malfoy started blindly at him, and Harry paused and sighed. "Of course you didn't. Because you didn't think of anything but your anger and the best way to pay me back. That was more important to you than Scorpius."

Malfoy gagged and lashed his feet, but that wound the web around a few parts of his legs it hadn't touched yet, and left him even more a prisoner. Harry snorted at him. His rage had mostly gone, as if it had bled out of him and clung to Malfoy along with the web.

"You're an idiot," said Harry. "I think that you've been acting mental, whether or not you actually _are_. Someone had to tell you that. They haven't, or you haven't listened." He swallowed. "I regret the time I put in trying to help you, but not the time I put in trying to help Scorpius. I hope that I've saved his father for him. I hope so."

He hesitated one more time, but there was no more to say, no more words between them. In the end, he cast the charm that would dissolve the web, but placed a Timer Charm on it, so it would only let the web fade when he was safely away. Then he turned to collect the warlocks.

Malfoy made another muffled sound. Deriding himself for doing it even as he did so, Harry turned around.

Malfoy was staring at him with lowered eyelids and hanging feet. As Harry watched, his throat bobbed, but whether he was going to say something or spit something, Harry didn't know. The web blocked all clear sight of his movements.

Shaking his head, Harry turned and walked the floating warlocks back into the Ministry. He would deal with them and omit mention of Malfoy from the attack, unless someone came out here and found him before the Dissolving Charm worked. For the hurt he had done him, Harry thought, he owed Malfoy that one more chance.

Other than that, no, nothing.

_I hope that he's smart enough to walk away and just let this go. I hope so._


	13. Humiliated in Defeat

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Thirteen—Humiliated in Defeat_

Draco sat in the warm bath in the center of the biggest bathroom in Malfoy Manor and watched the steam rising past him from half-lidded eyes. He had no intention of opening his eyes any more than that, not for a long time.

The water coiled along his limbs, relaxing them. When Draco bent down and dipped his head under the surface, using his hands to rub rich, sweet-smelling shampoo into his hair, the bruises and other irritations he had received from Potter began to fade.

_You said that you weren't going to think about Potter._

Draco lifted his head again, listening to the tinkle of water from his hair back into the bath before he looked at his arms again. Bruises mottled his arms. There was a large one on his back that he had seen in the full-length mirror on the wall before he sat down. Abrasions covered his skin. Now and then he still drew a wheezing, painful breath from the way Potter had knelt on him, even though he'd taken a Pain-Killing Draught the instant he returned home.

Potter had flung him into walls and grappled with him and used a web on him.

Potter had used a Dissolving Charm that had let Draco go.

Draco sat there, and he thought about Potter, because it was impossible not to. He only reached out and picked up his wand when the bathwater began to cool and he had to make sure that it was still soft and steaming around him.

There was no answer to the dilemma. If Potter was his implacable enemy, he would have brought Draco in to the Aurors and had him arrested for attempted murder—or at least attempted paralysis, the most likely consequence of the Back-Breaking Curse. He wouldn't have cared about subjecting Scorpius's father, as he said he did, to a sojourn in Azkaban Prison.

_He's a liar. You know that you can't trust him. And not because of things that happened years ago or because you can never trust a Gryffindor. You can't trust him because he told you powerful and recent lies._

Draco shuddered and tipped a cupful of water over his head. The cups that his ancestors had made and kept to aid in their bathing were lovely things, made of silver and faceted with small, gleaming embedded emeralds around the lip.

If Potter was his friend, he wouldn't have lied to Draco in the first place. He wouldn't have mistreated him. He wouldn't have made it necessary for Draco to hire warlocks.

Everything was so strained and strange and difficult.

Draco had known what would happen, when he went after Ethan. He would get an explanation. He wanted Ethan's painful torture and possible death, and he especially wanted that after Moonstar had told him that "Ethan" was Potter, but the information had been primary.

He hadn't got one. Potter had walked away with the secret of his strange behavior intact, not something Draco would have wanted to happen under any circumstances.

He could feel that realization pouring through him, tightening his muscles. A few hours ago, he thought it would have made him write back to Moonstar or seek Potter out again.

But he hadn't been thinking.

That was what his parents had been trying to tell him, Draco thought, as he picked up his wand and cast the Warming Charm on the water again. It was what Blaise, in his own way, had been trying to tell him, although being Blaise, he would never come right out and say it. He always had to disguise it with a joke instead.

Draco hadn't been _thinking_. He was just feeling, running around after the next emotion that reared its ugly head. He was concerned about Scorpius, he was infatuated with the idea of Ethan helping him and wanted to meet him, he was full of rage at the way Ethan had manipulated him, he wanted to kill. He had made plans, like the one to manipulate Ethan until he gave up his secrets, but he hadn't followed through on any of them except the ones made on the spur of the moment.

_That is pathetic._

Draco wouldn't have been able to bear that thought, an hour ago, a day ago. He wouldn't have been able to _think _it. It would have been drowned in the cascade of his rage. He acknowledged that now.

He still hated the fact that Potter was the one who had made him slow down enough to think about it, that he owed this space of clear thought, in a way, to Potter. But he was wise enough to acknowledge it.

That was the most pathetic thing of all, that he had prided himself on being so clever and manipulative and wonderful, but he hadn't carried a single one of his plans through. He still didn't know why Potter had done this. And since Potter obviously wanted both of them to walk away from this and never speak again, he wouldn't willingly tell Draco, either.

_I want to know._

Draco felt his fist clenched in the water without knowing how it had got that way. He looked down, and eased it open. Lazy little trails of red curled through the water, and after another second of staring, he understood. He had bloodied his own hand, without realizing it. The force of his own passion had been more important.

_People like you wanted to be—Slytherins, Malfoys, pure-bloods—can feel. But they don't let their emotions dictate their actions. You didn't let your irritation at having to get married stop you from doing it. You didn't let your boredom with Astoria let you end your marriage before Scorpius was born. You don't let your exasperation with your parents drive you away from them forever, because Scorpius needs his grandparents._

Draco knew he had made rational decisions, as recently as the last year. What he didn't know was what had driven him away from them.

Then he flinched, as the picture of the reason appeared in his head, blond and grey-eyed as he was.

_Scorpius._

Draco didn't know how to raise him, didn't know how to cope with a child that couldn't be reasoned with. He knew about pure-blood ways, but none of them applied. He knew about being a good Malfoy, but he wasn't raising one. He knew about Slytherins, but Scorpius wasn't of the age to go to Hogwarts yet.

Everything he wanted to be, everything he was, fell apart in the face of Scorpius's passionate temper tantrums, and Draco responded with nothing but passion of his own. It was all he had left.

He had shut himself away from Theo because he was disgusted at the way Theo ran around. He had neglected his friendship with Blaise because Blaise's humor annoyed him. He had turned his back on the advice his parents would have offered him because he couldn't bear the thought of them criticizing him.

Every one of those decisions hadn't been something an adult would do—at least, not an adult who had the regular company of other adults, and could get some perspective outside the little, closed world of the child. Scorpius might be the center of Draco's universe, but Draco couldn't help him if he was spiraling out of control.

That was exactly what had happened, though.

_This fall was a long time coming._

Draco would still rather anyone than Potter had precipitated his fall. But it had happened, now. He was awake, now.

So, the biggest question was what he was going to do next. Not whether Scorpius would ultimately want to be a Malfoy, or how he would make Potter pay, or whether there was some answer as to why Potter had invented the identity of Ethan Starfall to write to him—although Draco would still like to know why that had happened. What _decisions _he would make.

Not just what he would feel.

Draco Summoned ink and parchment, and began casting the spells that would make the quill write on the parchment of its own accord, hovering above the water so it wouldn't get wet.

This time, he was writing a letter to Theo.

* * *

Harry couldn't sleep.

That was a pretty normal reaction, he thought, after a day when he had been attacked by three warlocks and then had his secret revealed by Malfoy. He'd spent a long time at the Ministry questioning the warlocks, too. But none of them could tell him anything useful about Malfoy. It seemed he'd been smart enough to meet them in a disguise.

_That was the only smart thing he did._

Harry rolled over and punched the pillow. In a few hours, light would be leaking through the windows, and he hadn't really done anything responsible. He hadn't slept, he hadn't thought things through, he hadn't decided what to do about Malfoy.

_There is nothing to do about Malfoy. You gave him one chance, and if he comes after you again, you're justified in responding with everything you've got._

But that wasn't the main problem. Lying there with his lungs laboring again as if he was back in the battle with the warlocks, Harry shut his eyes. His chest hurt.

The peace of his life had been shattered, and he didn't know how he was going to get it back. It wasn't as though he could escape into Ethan's voice without trouble again, not after what he had done with it and what he had done to Malfoy with it.

That was the real problem at the heart of it all, he realized numbly, when another hour had slipped past and his ability to hide from himself was almost gone. He had wanted to escape into another time and place and sort of life when he first realized he was childless and always would be, and Ethan had been a way to do that. But let someone take that away, and he was left almost as helpless and fragile as he had been the day St. Mungo's told him the truth about the curse.

_No wonder I reacted to the news of Ginny's pregnancy the way I did. It took her longer than I thought it would, but she moved on with her life. I haven't._

Harry clenched his hand in the sheets. Sometimes, when he got in this mood after he had seen another Auror killed or injured, picturing the faces of Ethan's children had helped him. Or coming up with another adventure they could have the next day, in the perfect life they lived, with loving parents and grandparents and a life never marred by the war.

But now, he couldn't see them. They wavered like smoke in front of his inner eyes and vanished.

_Maybe I didn't have any right to them in the first place. _

He had thought that before, and he had ignored the thought, because if he didn't have a right to them when he was the one who had created Ethan Starfall, who did? But he wondered now if it was really something else, if he didn't have the right to them because creating them in the first place had been irresponsible.

Certainly writing about them to Malfoy had. If he hadn't used those names, then Malfoy would have found someone else to advise him about Scorpius without being suspicious of that person's real name or motives, and Harry would have remained safe with his secret.

He sat up. Morning was creeping along the walls, and he had solved nothing. He felt no better about things than he had when he had lain down.

Harry buried his face in his hands. He had a meeting in a few hours, to speak with the other Aurors who would join him for a new case. The case concerned the kidnapping of children, and Kingsley had given it to him partially because he knew that Harry worked so hard on cases that involved children. Harry wouldn't be doing any field work, per Kingsley's ban. What he was supposed to do was advise the other Aurors and give them clues about the minds of the kidnappers, if he could.

_You have a job. You have a real life that does affect some people positively, even if it's only your friends and the victims of the cases._

When he thought about it like that, Harry's breathing slowed down. He would just have to concentrate on his job, that was all. It was half of what he had done in the last three years, anyway, using his job as an anchor to reality and as a shield when he might be invited some place where Ginny would be, too.

The other half had been Ethan.

_But that's done now. _Harry couldn't bring himself to burn the journals that contained Ethan's life, but he would lock them up, and keep them away from his friends. They were pathetic, they were private and silly, but he had always acknowledged that. What he couldn't stand was for other people to find out his secret, now.

This was his life, the only one he had. It would be foolish to waste it.

* * *

"I must admit, we were somewhat surprised to hear from you this early, Draco. Your mother seemed convinced that whatever occupied you would keep you away for some time."

Draco's temper boiled again as he stared down into the bowl of steaming soup he had carried with him into the library, so as to give him something to do with his hands while he spoke to his parents. Or his mother. He had been sure that it would be his mother who would answer the fireplace, and they could talk trustfully, the way they usually did.

But instead, it was his father. The man who had already raised the successful Malfoy heir of his generation, and didn't need to worry about it anymore, but could criticize Draco from a position of power.

Draco swallowed, and reminded himself of what happened when he just blurted out his thoughts and did nothing except on emotion. "I've come to ask you to keep Scorpius for a few more weeks."

Lucius's eyes sharpened, and he shifted. He'd already had his arms crossed, or so Draco assumed from the position of his shoulders, but now, Draco could really see them folded. "Why? Does this quest your mother spoke of lead you out of the country?"

"Yeah," said Draco. "It does." Theo was in Vienna right now, on a flying visit to some colleagues of his there, and Draco had arranged to visit him. But he knew he couldn't mention that. His parents knew he didn't speak to Theo anymore. They would want an explanation, and Draco…

Wasn't ready to give it yet.

Lucius was still, watching him. Draco knew this for an old tactic of his father's. Silence touched some people with an irresistible compulsion to fill it. Draco had been one of those people, once upon a time.

Now, he sipped his soup and waited. It was also good to have something to do with his mouth, he thought. He vowed to have food like this with him the next time he firecalled his parents. Yes, in a way it was a weakness, because they would probably guess what he was doing, but on the other hand, what mattered most were his actions and words, not their impressions.

Draco felt dizzy a second later. _When did I start believing that? _

Before he could think too much about it, Lucius surrendered. "Very well. It's true that he is exposed to more of the pleasant side of his heritage here."

Draco leaned forwards, insistent now. "You wanted me to have the Manor so I could expose him to all the beautiful things that you taught me to appreciate." That had certainly been the main reason that his parents had moved out, although Draco thought it also had a lot to do with the memories of the Dark Lord lurking around every corner.

"That is more than true," said Lucius, one of those ambiguous phrases that would leave Draco wondering for hours what his father meant with it. "But we thought that you would explore the beauty of the Manor. You have taught him nothing but duty."

Draco did some more staring that ought to have made his father back down, but, maybe since they were on opposite sides of a fireplace, that was exactly what Lucius didn't do. Finally, Draco had to say it. "That was what _you _taught me, when I was Scorpius's age."

"And I realize now that it was a mistake," said Lucius. "It made you obsessed with living up to a certain set of standards, which did not always help you later."

Draco snarled. His father stared at him. Draco ignored that. Maybe he _was _displaying unusual emotion, odd especially in front of a man that he had tried to keep his difficulties in the last few years concealed from, but he had to say this. "So I'm supposed to suffer and not do as well just because you had this experience that you think is wrong now?"

"I do not understand what you are saying, Draco."

Draco shook his head sharply. "I was trying to model the way I raised Scorpius after the way you raised me, because it was the only model I had. And now you sit there contentedly and tell me that it was all wrong? When were you planning to tell me that? How was I supposed to realize it?"

Lucius didn't look unruffled, but he didn't look as changed and remorseful as Draco had hoped, either. "Lately, whenever we have tried to offer you advice about Scorpius, you have snarled at us and changed the subject. We thought that you wished to be left alone."

Draco closed eyes and lips on the snap that he immediately wanted to give. His father was right, as far as it went, although Draco thought he should have persisted anyway if he saw his grandson suffering.

_I hope that I've saved his father for him. I hope so._

Potter should have had nothing to do with this, but he did have something, and Draco thought acknowledging that to himself and moving on was better than saying it aloud. So he murmured now, "I was—running into trouble raising Scorpius, and I had defined myself as someone who had nothing to do, no more important duty but to raise him."

"It _is _the most important thing you can do."

"Stop misunderstanding me!" Draco glared at his father, and proved to himself and Lucius both that his anger hadn't gone away after all. "I _meant _that you had a life outside me when I was that age. And so did Mother. You had each other. You had your politics, and the alliances that you maintained with other pure-blood families."

"It was your choice to divorce Astoria."

Draco ignored the attempt to distract him from what he was saying. "I had nothing else. That was what led to Scorpius becoming my obsession."

His father looked at him keenly. "Once I would never have thought to hear you use that word. What changed your mind?"

Draco thought of the many things that he couldn't tell his father about—Potter, his rage, the warlocks, how he had flailed around screaming and trying to break Potter's back, and Potter—and then decided that he would need to say something, or his father would never believe him. "A confrontation with a man I'd been relying on for advice. I didn't want to believe some of the things he said. But seeing him face-to-face was a lot more effective than reading his letters."

Perhaps that was the truth, after all. Seeing Potter stare him in the face and tell him to stop acting like a madman was far more effective than reading that admonishment would have been.

_He was right._

Not about everything. Potter's bizarre motives for writing to Draco under a false name and inventing a false family were still suspect. But Draco didn't know if he would ever get an explanation for those, while he _did _have an explanation for how Potter's words had affected him.

Lucius seemed to take that statement into consideration for a much longer, and more insulting, time than Draco had thought he would. Then he nodded and said, "Perhaps you need a journey abroad. We will keep Scorpius."

Which was the simple thing that Draco had been trying to make him agree with in the first place. But nothing was ever simple with his father.

"Thank you," he said. "I'll be in Vienna. An owl should find me without much trouble."

Lucius didn't move, either to shut down the Floo connection or say farewell, which Draco would have expected. Draco finally reached to shut down the connection himself, impatient with the staring contest. Lucius had subjected Draco to enough of those since he became an adult that he'd lost his tolerance for them long ago.

"I hope that your change lasts."

Draco narrowed his eyes. "Excuse me?"

"This change," said Lucius, and gestured between them as though it was a living thing, perhaps fragile, like a flower, that would crumple if touched too heavily. "I don't know if it was the presence of your advisor that brought it on or not, but I encourage you to encourage it."

Then he did shut down the Floo connection, and left Draco with a head and a room full of ringing silence.

_Encourage it._

Well, his visit to Theo was going to encourage getting out of the house and having interests other than his son. But what exactly would keep him from succumbing to the rage and obsession again once he was back home?

The rage was there for the thinking of it, such a long and powerful rush that Draco swayed with it. He still wanted to know why Potter had hidden under the name Ethan Starfall, he thought. That was the main thing he lacked. He could accept Potter's superiority in battle and even the way Potter had humiliated him, but—

_There is a way to find out. Write a letter to him and see what he says. He doesn't have to respond, but he might, for the same reason that he dissolved that web instead of arresting you and bringing you into the Ministry. This was partially his fault, and Gryffindors have really tender consciences._

Draco turned the matter slowly over in his mind. No, it wasn't guaranteed to work. But it had a much higher chance that most of his plans so far. And it was cunning.

The way he had thought he was being. The way he wanted to be.

So Draco wrote the letter, in the midst of the house-elves packing his clothes and several books that he might want on the journey, and sent it off by his eager owl.


	14. A Subtle Perfume

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Fourteen—A Subtle Perfume_

Harry leaned across his desk. He could feel the tension radiating down his shoulders, spreading through his arms and hands. Ever since the debacle with Malfoy, being on desk duty instead of in the field had become a double punishment.

Not that Kingsley could have known that, and Harry reminded himself again not to take his frustration out on the harmless—if irritating—Auror in front of him. "Tell me what you saw."

Auror Ivan Bailey obediently closed his eyes. He was a heavyset man who, Harry thought from the expert eye he had developed for wand calluses, probably used more offensive than defensive magic. He needed to spend more time practicing Defense if he wanted to duel someone and survive, Harry thought clinically. Of course, who was _Harry _to talk, with the way that he had messed up his life?

He wasn't qualified as an adviser except about things that didn't remotely relate to Malfoy or himself. Luckily, this case was one of those.

"I saw him draw the wand with his right hand," Bailey muttered. "That was the first strange thing, because I knew they'd reported the Dark Snake as being left-handed."

"Good!" Harry said encouragingly, although he didn't really think it was strange at all. Sometimes witnesses made mistakes in the heat of the moment, especially when they were trying to prevent someone from taking their children. "Then what did he do?"

"He leaped over to the side and used the Blasting Curse." By now, Bailey was deep in the effort of remembering, and his lips moved while sweat stood out on his forehead. Harry strangled his impatience. It was just harder for some people to remember than others. He shouldn't blame someone who was doing the best he could. "He was trying to tumble some boxes off to the side so they would fall and block the door."

"And did you hear some crying beyond the door?" Harry prompted. That was what the other Aurors had said, but Bailey hadn't mentioned it in his report, and Harry was curious to know if his memory matched up with the others'.

"No," Bailey said, and blinked at him, apparently halted in his tracks. "Just silence."

Harry leaned back a little, sighing. It wasn't something liked to contemplate, but he had to. "Then the children might already have been moved when you arrived there." The other Aurors had thought the children were there and snatched by accomplices while the Dark Snake dueled them, but Harry had his doubts about that. This kidnapping ring was intelligent—damnably so—and quick.

Bailey might be wrong, of course, and the other Aurors right. But none of them had mentioned the detail of the Dark Snake holding his wand in the "wrong" hand, either.

"Does that mean you think they're dead, sir?" Bailey leaned forwards.

Harry looked up, blinking. "What? The children? No, I think the chances are very good they're still alive." Although they couldn't be sure since this group of kidnappers had only left a symbol at the houses of the stolen children, not sent any taunting notes or ransom demands, Harry thought the children were being taken to wizarding parents who hadn't managed to have any babies of their own. Every single one of the children was under the age of two, and most not talking yet. But every one had shown early signs of accidental magic.

The symbol was an eagle clutching a snake in its talons. Harry's research had uncovered a group of pure-bloods in wizarding Britain in the nineteenth century who had used that symbol and held open meetings where they debated taking young children from Muggleborns or Muggles, as long as they were magical, and forcibly adopting them into pure-blood families. They had never put their plans in practice.

It sounded as though someone meant to, though.

"All right." Bailey gave a stolid, comfortable nod. "As long as you think we have a chance of rescuing them. It would be horrible if we didn't."

"It would be," said Harry, and smiled back at him. Once again, his silent judgment of someone had caught up with him. Bailey and he had the same thoughts. There was no reason to think he was particularly slow. "The Dark Snake got away?"

"Yes," said Bailey simply. "Although he was wounded, and I did bring in a bit of the blood…" He raised one hand when Harry opened his mouth. "I know that there's objection to blood magic among the other Aurors, sir, but I thought that using his blood to track him down can't be horrible. Right?"

Harry hesitated. Then he said, "Well, maybe, but I'm not on field duty right now, and I'm not sure that anyone else who is would have the same thoughts about blood magic."

Bailey looked so disappointed that Harry added hastily, "But maybe if I took the blood and performed the tracking spell myself, that would be enough? I could give the results to you, and you could follow them."

Bailey smiled at him. "That's right. And you can send me a Patronus any time of the day or night, sir. I really want to find those kids." He dug in his pockets for a moment, which clinked and rattled in a way that told Harry what his hobby was even before Bailey gave him a more embarrassed smile and murmured something about being an enthusiastic Potions amateur.

At last, he came up with a vial of blood that he handed to Harry. Harry held it up, himself, and considered it carefully. The blood looked normal, but Harry continued watching it, and grunted in satisfaction as he made out the small dark red flakes floating near the surface.

"Sir?"

Harry waved his hand at Bailey, and he obediently shut up. At last, Harry set the vial down and smiled at Bailey. "This _is _going to be useful," he said, feeling a kind of dampened excitement stir in him.

Bailey obviously didn't see the need to come up with a new word when the one he had already used would do just as well. "Sir?"

Harry rubbed his hands together. "I thought the first time someone mentioned the Dark Snake commanding snakes that something was strange," he said. "I would have heard if there was another Parselmouth around." He was sure of that. People were always contacting him to brag about having scars that were shaped kind of like lightning bolts, or having some vague blood connection to the Potters. Rumors of a Parselmouth would have spread fast. "He isn't a Parselmouth by birth. He's taken the Snake Tongue potion."

Bailey gaped at him. "But isn't that—"

"Poisonous," Harry finished with a grim smile. "In the extreme. It'll kill him in the end, but right now, it gives him the ability to make snakes do what he wants." With telepathy and not Parseltongue, admittedly, but he doubted that someone watching an unknown person command snakes silently would notice much difference. "This will make it easier to track him down, if I can focus on the substances in his blood. Good job, Auror Bailey."

"Thank you, sir." Bailey sighed. "How long do you think it will take you to use the tracking spell?"

Harry considered the vial of blood again. There was a good amount there, but he had only read about the spell and never performed it himself, which would probably mean more than one attempt. "I think I can have the results by midnight tonight."

"I won't go to bed."

"No, do." Harry grinned at Bailey again, astonished to find how much of a purpose having a spell to perform that could help in a case gave him. Yes, this would have to be the new anchor of his life, besides Teddy and his friends' children. "You'll want to be at least a little rested to go after this bastard."

Bailey's sharp answering grin transformed his face, into something much worse than a mere Auror's face. Harry gave him a vague wave as he left the office, and then focused on the vial in his hand again.

He was going to give that stupidly named but nasty Dark Snake a nasty surprise of his own.

* * *

That, at least, was what he thought, until he arrived home and found Malfoy's owl sitting there and waiting for him.

Harry spent a long, silent moment staring at the owl. Then he turned around and put the vial of blood gently down on the table next to the one where the owl perched.

The bird watched him. Harry walked away from it, used the loo, and came back. He prepared a small meal of biscuits and cheese and ate that without offering anything to the owl. He prepared himself for the spell by reading some of the book that he knew discussed it. Then he came out and peered around the corner.

Malfoy's bird hadn't moved. It had been looking at the far wall, but it turned its head now and locked patient eyes on him.

Harry hissed under his breath. After everything that had happened between them, what could he and Malfoy have left to _say _to each other? It made no sense, and the only thing he could think of was for Malfoy to do something that also didn't make sense—like threaten Harry with the exposure of Ethan. That Malfoy couldn't do that without exposing himself was something that might not weigh with him, if he was crazy enough.

That thought was enough to rouse Harry's anger, though. After he had left the path open for Malfoy to leave and even his connection with the warlocks to escape investigation, Malfoy was determined to act like an idiot?

He held out his hand roughly for the letter. The owl took flight and landed heavily on his arm a second later. Harry ignored it, except to toss it a bit of the cheese off his plate, as he opened the letter one-handed.

_Potter, _

_The reason I started this in the first place was to get answers—answers as to how I might raise Scorpius better and if there was anyone in the world who would help me. You might say I got some I didn't like. But I never learned why you wrote to me in the first place. What was so attractive about a begging letter that you decided you had to answer it? Why pretend to be Ethan Starfall instead of use the power of your name to recommend your advice? After all, at the beginning you didn't know who I was, either._

He hadn't bothered signing it. Harry closed his eyes. He didn't need to.

The owl pecked his hand.

Harry hissed and pulled his bleeding palm back. "After all the sitting here you've done, this is when you decide to get impatient?" he demanded.

The owl stared back, a stare that seemed to go all the way through Harry. Harry sighed. Yes, it was when it started to get impatient for a reply, he decided. It could only put up with being ignored until Harry actually read the letter.

Reluctantly, Harry reached for ink and parchment, and tried to deposit the owl back on the table. It refused to go until Harry wrote the first few letters of his reply, and then took a long, deliberate step back, flashing the talons on its feet as if to let Harry know that it possessed plenty of weapons to _get _a response from him if he decided to ignore it. Harry scowled and turned his back on it as he wrote.

Petty revenge, but wasn't what _all_ of this was about?

_Malfoy,_

_All you need to know is that Ethan is who I wanted to be—the normal, happy wizard without any experience of having gone through a war and none in the realms of being extraordinary, who could answer the way I would have if I was normal. Someone who could help a stranger without having to worry about his real name. I already apologized as much as I'm going to for what resulted from that. The rest is up to you. Worry about being a good father to Scorpius, and not about me._

Harry didn't sign the letter—fair was fair—and slipped it at once into an envelope. The owl was already speeding over to take it, but strangely, the bird didn't fly out the window right away. Instead, it hovered in front of Harry and hooted softly.

Harry stared at it. He had no idea what was going on.

The owl abruptly spun in midair and flew out the window. Harry leaned on the nearer table and watched it out of sight.

Then he turned back to setting up the tracking spell that, after all, _was _his job and his reason for existence. Ethan belonged to the past, just like Malfoy and Scorpius and Harry's plans of having a family. This was his present, his real life.

* * *

Draco raised a skeptical eyebrow at the letter Potter had sent him. Then he laid it down in front of him and looked at it again. One thing the debacle so far had taught him, at least, was to look closely at these letters, to read them twice.

_Ethan is who I wanted to be._

Draco didn't believe _that, _actually. Potter couldn't have helped being a part of the war, with the Dark Lord after him, but he certainly could have helped being an Auror. He could have quit that job and become the good father he wanted to push Draco into being. Instead, he had stayed an Auror and divorced the woman he'd supposedly had a perfect relationship with. His choices made no _sense_.

"Is that the mysterious correspondent Blaise told me about?"

Draco looked up, then took the cup of tea Theodore was bringing him with a murmured thanks. "Yes," he said. "He and I needed to talk about some of the things he said and some of the things I did. He wrote back to me, and I have to admit his response is strange."

"Things with mysterious correspondents usually are," said Theodore comfortably, and poured his tea into his own cup.

Draco settled back, and found himself smiling. "You should know, with as many letters as you get from different people all over the world."

"But I do meet most of those people," Theodore said, dropping into the chair across from him. He was still tall and lanky, but he smiled a lot more than he'd done in Hogwarts, and his hair was wild and shaggy in a way that Draco knew would never look good if he tried it on himself. "Eventually. Whenever I'm in their countries on a mission." He peered over his teacup at Draco. "I know that you didn't resist visiting me for so long because of the people I was talking to, though. Blaise told me that much."

"Blaise has a very big mouth," Draco muttered, burying himself in his tea.

"What was the real reason you didn't come?" Theodore asked quietly.

"You said Blaise told you." _Damn him, anyway. _That was a trick Theodore had had at Hogwarts, inconveniently leaning across at breakfast when Draco was struggling with sleepiness and asking why he'd skipped a study session the night before, or why he hadn't helped with Greg's Potions essay the way he'd promised to, or why he wasn't going out with Pansy yet. At least this time Draco thought he had a way to escape being honest.

Theodore's return look was deeply unimpressed. "He told me that it wasn't because I move around so much, or because I have strange friends. He didn't tell me what the reason actually _was_."

Draco grimaced. He couldn't travel back in time and change what he had said, and he couldn't pretend that his opinions had completely changed, either. So he would have to stand by them.

He stood up and strolled slowly across the floor of Theodore's flat—well, a flat that belonged to one of his lovers, but the lover was dead and had left it to Theodore—and stared at the roofs of Vienna. They were in the wizarding part of the city, but that didn't distract Draco. From this distance, at least, it looked too much like Diagon Alley, and London, and specifically the part of London where he had met Potter with the warlocks.

"Draco?"

_Right. It's not going away. _Draco swallowed and turned around. "I didn't like the way you flitted from lover to lover," he said.

Theodore stared at him and blinked once. "Don't let me hear you championing relationships based on pure affection now. It's a bit late, after the way you married Astoria."

Draco waved a hand irritably. "That was—business. I didn't love her."

"_Exactly. _Can I ask what the problem is, that I do love mine?"

Draco had known it would come down to this, and that Theodore would be angry, and still he hadn't braced himself properly. The anger that roared through him in response was the dangerous kind, the torrent that had overwhelmed him the last time he saw Potter.

"It's—I never had another lover while I was married to her," he said, and stared some more at Vienna. Still there was nothing there to hold his attention and distract him from what he would have to say. "That's not because I loved her. It's because I know the rules, and the rules say that you have to be discreet."

"Why do I have to obey those rules? That's only for people who are married, and I've never been."

_And what are you going to do when your father starts asking about the Nott name? _But Draco knew that would probably never happen. There had been some kind of explosion between Theodore and his father years ago, just after the war, and shortly after Theodore had entered a Potions apprenticeship in Romania that removed her from his father's sphere of influence entirely.

"There are other standards you maintain, so you can look at people at a party without blushing."

Theodore laughed, but there was a bitter edge to it. "That's for people in one country, Draco. Most of my lovers would have to do six hours of traveling to be in the same room together." Draco heard the chair creak as he shifted. "And anyway, they knew about each other. Some of them have permanent partners of their own while I'm with them. The last time I saw Marissa, she invited me—"

"It doesn't _matter_." Draco recognized the tone of his voice as panic only when he was speaking aloud. "Listen. Listen, Theodore."

"I'm listening. So far, I haven't heard anything yet that sounds like you have a reason. Except obsession with tradition and making sure that everyone knows you're a good little emotionless automaton."

"I'm not emotionless, either," Draco muttered, and despite what he'd endured at Theodore's hand so far, he had to smile. "If you'd seen me in the last little while, you'd know that's the last thing I am." _And not for lack of trying, either._ It would have been easier if he'd cared about nothing but tradition, the way Blaise had also accused him. Then he would have raised Scorpius without a care, not because he was a better father, but simply because Scorpius's protests wouldn't have mattered to him.

_Is that the way my father did it? _

No, Draco was certain a moment later. There was always love there. But Draco himself hadn't managed to strike that balance yet.

"You're trying to be," said Theodore, and from the sound of it, he had folded his arms and maybe even kicked a chair. "And you think everyone else should be, too. That and the _rules. _You and your bloody rules. You never cared that much about them in Hogwarts."

"That was something I learned after Hogwarts," Draco admitted, turning around again. "I thought that I didn't know what to do anymore, because I didn't trust my own judgment, and all those decisions I made went wrong."

Theodore hesitated, then gave him a rueful, dazzling smile. "That was because everything was fucked-up then, Draco. Everything. Your decisions were part of the same process."

"I know," Draco said softly. "But part of it is just that I was jealous you were so happy and having so much fun, I reckon. It's—different now. I'm trying to figure out how to have fun and not just hover over Scorpius all the time."

Theodore grinned slyly, and Draco knew he was forgiven. "I could introduce you to someone."

"I think it's too soon for that."

Theodore snorted. "How long have you and Astoria been divorced? It's not like you're hopping from bed to bed—"

"No, I mean that I need to focus on myself for a while, and being a good father," Draco interrupted, and if he had stolen an opportune phrase from Potter, then he really didn't care. "I don't want to start another relationship until I know that I won't focus obsessively on that person like I did on Scorpius."

One of Theodore's eyebrows rose slowly to join the other. "He must be good."

"Who?" Draco turned to face Theodore fully. "I really don't have a lover."

"I know, but this mysterious correspondent of yours." Theodore let his chair legs fall to rest on the floor, and considered Draco intently. "If he can make you _think _about things, he's good."

Draco scowled mildly. "It's more than that. Some of this realization I did come to on my own, though."

"Was he the one who suggested you visit me?"

"No." Draco gave Theodore a superior look. "Blaise was, and then I decided to."

"Hmmm."

Draco rolled his eyes, glad now that Potter hadn't signed the letter, even though he knew Theodore wouldn't look at his post. "I did make the decision. I couldn't have come if someone was forcing me to."

"I know." Theodore's eyes were shadowed for a moment. "I just wonder how much influence this person has over you, and if it's always going to be the right kind."

"If he influences me at all, it's in the opposite direction," Draco muttered, although he had to wonder. He had always been prone to react strongly to Potter—not this way, but strongly. He might do what Potter didn't want or try to spy on him or take the opposite side of a war from him, but it was strong.

"Right." Theodore clearly didn't believe him, and also was just as clearly relieved to let it drop. "So. Do you want to go out tonight?"

Draco walked back over and folded up Potter's letter before he responded. He almost felt as though he should answer it first, but that was absurd. It might not even need an answer.

And he did need to reclaim his life, and stop worrying about answers he might already have.

"Yes," he said. "Let's."


	15. Blood Magic

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Fifteen—Blood Magic_

Harry carefully lowered the vial of blood to the table in front of him. His arms were twitching with the excitement of his pent-up magic, power he had been calling on steadily as he arranged the ritual implements around him.

It was time.

Harry touched his wand to the vial of blood, and spoke the command that would pop the cork. It would be best if he didn't touch the blood until he was ready to make the connection with the Dark Snake.

He had looked up the tracking spell and studied it carefully, only to find that it was considerably more like a ritual than the simple incantation and wand movements he remembered. Luckily, he'd had everything he needed around his house from previous ritual attempts; one of the ways he'd distracted himself in the past few years was spending more time on magical theory and with magical books.

Now his power rose and began to dance lazily around his head as he directed the vial to tip the blood into a shallow silver dish. There was a slight hiss, and a cloud of white vapor rose up from it. Harry nodded. It was nice to confirm his suspicions that the blood was tainted with the Snake Tongue potion, although in all honesty, he hadn't doubted it once he saw the dark flecks floating in it.

He pricked his finger, and for a moment, his magic tried to leave his body through the unexpected new hole. Harry ignored its attempt and laid his finger on the piece of cedar wood he'd arranged beside the bowl. In a second, a small dark stain spread across it, and Harry was ready to make the connection between his blood and the blood Bailey had collected.

From there, it would be a relatively simple spell to make the connection between the blood that flowed in the Dark Snake's veins and that which flowed in his.

Harry closed his eyes, arranging his knowledge of the words in his head, making sure he was ready to move. Then he tapped his wand against the silver dish again, and spoke the words of the spell in time with the dying, pure echo.

"_Sanguis ligo_."

The _power _that sparked up his veins then! Harry gasped and opened his eyes to see bright blue sparks running up the inside of his arm, just beneath the skin. On and on it went, spreading, bounding, heading for the heart.

The spell was supposed to work that way, Harry reminded himself, to calm his own nervousness. In truth, he had performed spells like this before and even blood magic before. There was nothing to be nervous about.

Only the _look _of the thing…

The blue sparks vanished beneath his robes. Harry closed his eyes and steadied himself with one hand clutching the table. Sometimes the revelations provided by blood magic spells like this were literally stunning.

And so it proved with this one. The minute the sparks arrived at his heart, Harry staggered backwards, overwhelmed by the sense of a second body, encasing a second flow of blood, and a second heartbeat filling his head and his ears.

He balanced himself quickly. Lose track of the spell now, and it would be hard to begin it again. The spell required a certain amount of blood poured into the silver bowl, and Harry doubted that he had enough left in the vial. He kept his eyes shut and concentrated until he was sure that he could separate his own heartbeat from the Dark Snake's, the body he could flex and lift from the one he didn't control.

And then he looked through the Dark Snake's eyes, passively, not trying to control what he looked at. The only thing he needed now was for the Dark Snake to turn in the right direction, so their heads were aligned. The direction was the most mystical part of the spell, the thing that would finally cement the location in Harry's head.

The Dark Snake glanced out a window, which looked as though it was located on a level—probably a top level—of a tall stone tower. Harry shivered as though he had pneumonia. The moment was coming, coming, when they would align. He could feel it approaching like a thunderstorm.

"Harry!"

Harry's head rocked back on his neck. He felt the Dark Snake's rage, his confusion, because he had partially heard what Harry had, at least to the point that it made a buzzing in his ears, and he didn't understand what it was. He grabbed his wand and spun around in the middle of the room, tossing his head from side to side as though that could make his enemy, whoever it was, stop tormenting him.

In the middle of his spinning, he faced in the right direction, though Harry knew it was by luck. The knowledge of his location came flooding to life in Harry, the name of the tower and how far it was from where he stood, and in what direction.

_Northwest. Forty miles. _

Harry repeated the information aloud to himself, even as someone shook his shoulder impatiently and the alignment dissolved. He felt the Dark Snake reaching after him, a tendril of magic trying to snare the escaping power. But either the Dark Snake wasn't familiar with this particular spell or he simply couldn't move fast enough, because Harry slipped free, and knew he was free, and opened his eyes to Ron's shocked face.

"What are you _doing?" _Ron was dancing from foot to foot, shaking his head. "You have to come right now! Teddy's sick!"

Harry had a cold in the bottom of his stomach that no magic could match. He nodded. "I need to Floo this information to Auror Bailey," he said. "Or, wait, better. I'll send it by Patronus. Then I'll come with you. He's already at St. Mungo's?"

"No," said Ron, and shivered for a second beside the fireplace, which still had a tinge of green to its flames, showing the way he'd come. Harry shook his head. The experience of being in the Dark Snake's head had taken a lot less time than he thought. "They don't—Harry, Andromeda's worried that it's lycanthropic. And you know what they would do to someone they suspected was a werewolf, or had _any _werewolf qualities."

Harry went cold enough that he thought he'd shatter if he fell. "Yeah," he said quietly, drawing his wand. "I know."

He created the stag Patronus with a burst of happiness at the memory of what he'd felt the last time Teddy hugged him, and told it, "The Dark Snake is forty miles northwest of my home, which will put him not far outside Ottery St. Catchpole. Look for a stone tower called the Hand of Malice. I think that he felt something from me, so he might be gone, but at least you'll have a lot of clues to look for."

Harry watched as the stag bounded through the wall, then nodded and turned to Ron. "Let's go."

* * *

"You all right, Draco?"

Draco started and turned around. He'd been sitting alone in the kitchen of Theodore's flat—well, Theodore's lover's flat—brooding. He hesitated, then shrugged and said, "Yeah. Wondering what I should write next."

"To your mysterious correspondent?" Theodore yawned and wandered over to the small alcove in the corner of the wall, touching his wand to the kettle that hung there above a tiny hearth. Water poured into it, and the fire sprang to life.

"Yes," Draco murmured, watching it. "He said some things in the last letter that don't make sense. I wonder if it's worth pointing out that they don't make sense, or if he would only become defensive."

"You seem to know a lot about someone you refer to as mysterious." Theodore looked up from where he was Summoning food from the cabinets, and his eyes were as sharp as Draco remembered them, from when he could somehow _tell _that Draco hadn't studied for an Arithmancy exam. "Who is he?"

"That's something I'm not ready to tell you," Draco said. Something in Theodore's face made him add, "Or anyone else. I haven't told Blaise or Pansy or my parents."

"But you do know." The kettle whistled. Theodore must have added a charm to make the water boil faster. He swung the kettle smoothly off the fire and Summoned some cups even as he began to toast bread with a second charm. "How long has he not been so mysterious to you?"

"I discovered the truth by accident." Draco decided it was safe to admit that much. He watched idly as Theodore fixed breakfast. He might have offered to help if he was less distracted, but he really wanted to work through these thoughts about Potter if he could. "I don't know what I want to do about it."

"Yes, you said that already," Theodore murmured, with that flash of dry wit Draco also remembered. "What really matters is why you think you need to do something about it. He isn't someone you want in your life, is he?"

"What, as a friend?" Draco tried to put Potter and the word "friend" in the same sentence, even in his head, picturing words the way he sometimes did, scrawling sharp black against a white piece of parchment, and shuddered a little. "Merlin, no."

"Then just don't write to him," said Theodore, with all the dignity of someone who had discovered a new magical theory. "It's not as though you have to. Let this correspondence die, and there's nothing else you need to do."

"Yes, I suppose not," said Draco, and apparently he said it with enough force and conviction that he fooled Theodore. His friend smiled and reached for a plate to put the toast on.

"Now, I _hope _that you're ready to be introduced to people, because I have someone who's dying to meet a pure-blood from England…"

Draco listened with half an ear. He didn't know what he was going to do; that much was real whether he admitted it to Theodore or kept it to himself. What he did know was that letting it lapse was too casual for him.

Potter was Potter, and Draco was Draco. Things weren't done between them.

* * *

"It's worse than lycanthropy."

Harry lifted his head, his eyes dull. He'd spent most of the night with Teddy—the part he hadn't spent on the tracking spell trying to find the Dark Snake—and although all he had done was cast spells to lower his fever and try to soothe his delirium, it felt as if he had run miles. The Fever-Cooling Charms weren't working as well as they should, as well as they usually did. Harry didn't know why. He only knew that the fever would stay down for perhaps five minutes before it flared back up. He could cast another one right away with no ill effects on Teddy, but his hands shook now, and he collapsed into a chair before he turned to face Andromeda.

"Tell me what's worse than lycanthropy." Harry had the feeling that he didn't sound exactly sane, or rational, from the sharp stare Andromeda gave him before she turned to look at Teddy. But he didn't care. He had to know. There was enough fear in his stomach to make a dozen nightmares already.

"The fever is a rare symptom," Andromeda said, as if talking to herself, although she wrapped her arms around herself like she was cold. She never took her eyes off Teddy. "But I don't think the delirium comes from it. I think this is the Black madness."

For a second, fear made it impossible for Harry to breathe. He bent over at the waist, his own arms wrapped around his chest, and Andromeda ran over to him and swatted him in the back. He grunted and started breathing again.

"You said that you didn't think that that—ever came to someone whose direct ancestor didn't have it," he said, when he could speak again. "You didn't have it, Tonks didn't have it, Teddy _can't _have it."

Andromeda shook her head. "I thought that was true. But the more I think about it, the more I wonder what 'direct ancestor' means. Go back far enough on the tree, and you'll find some grandfather or grandmother that had it. Maybe it just skips generations."

Once, Harry would have thought she was cold, detached, the way she stood there and talked about things. But he knew better, knew _her _better, now. She stood there as if calm, but her eyes were wide and wild.

The Black madness, as Andromeda had told Harry when Teddy was young and they watched him constantly for signs of becoming a werewolf, was the source of most of the mental things the Blacks did—like hanging the heads of their house-elves on the wall. It usually started with one member of the family seeming delirious for a while, usually around puberty, and then seemingly recovering. But after that, the madness was in them, and it would twist everything they said and did.

Harry had banished the thought from his mind when Andromeda told him she'd never had it, though. That meant Teddy was safe.

_Maybe not, _Harry thought now, as Teddy launched into another rambling monologue.

"Trains—it's like the trains! And they're like the clouds! It's like the Muggles! They want us to stop talking about it, but they can't make us stop talking about it…"

_Maybe he'll be like this for the rest of his life, never able to put two thoughts together in a row, _Harry thought, and then dragged himself back to the present when he realized Andromeda was speaking again.

"I've been—looking through books my father left me." From the nausea in Andromeda's face, Harry understood how hard that was for her to do, even for Teddy, and he reached out and pressed her hand in silent support. Andromeda gulped a breath and went on. "There's a potion that might help, if it is the madness and not a bad illness. At least, it won't hurt him."

"What's the problem with the potion?" Harry asked quietly. He knew as well as she did that she never would have hesitated to brew the potion, or ask him to help her, if there wasn't a serious side-effect to it. Or maybe the ingredients were rare and expensive, and she was hesitating to ask him to go and get them.

_There's nothing I wouldn't do for Teddy, _Harry thought, and his gaze went back to the bed. More precious than Ethan's hypothetical children, more precious than any secret he intended to carry to his grave. That was Teddy, and Rose, and Hugo. The children who were his own.

At least he knew that. In a different mood, Harry thought, he would have been tempted to give thanks to Malfoy for prompting that revelation.

"The potion needs Black blood," said Andromeda. "Blood from the person suffering from the madness, blood from an immediate relative, and blood from a relative who's not a parent or grandparent or sibling or child."

Harry felt as though he was in the middle of a pounding drum. "So the Malfoys are the only ones left."

Andromeda shut her eyes and nodded. "And for all that I don't think my surviving sister hates me as much as Bella did, I don't know if I dare ask her about this. She'd probably just refuse my firecall or return my owl unopened."

Harry swallowed. "I can call in a life-debt."

"She doesn't owe you one," Andromeda said, soft as snowfall. "But her son does."

_Yes, he does. And I might as well not have run away or tried to allow Malfoy some say in his own fate, I suppose, since this just happened to slap us back together. _

But Harry refused to say that right now. He nodded. "I did testify for him at his trial, and that's a debt as well. I'll send an owl to him."

"Thank you." Andromeda sighed. "I don't like thinking that it might take a life-debt to compel someone to save a child, when they should just do that anyway, but at least I know that that call is one that Malfoy won't be able to refuse."

"He should do it anyway," Harry agreed, and wondered for a second if he should tell her about the history that he had with Malfoy, the _recent _history, that made it nearly impossible for either Malfoy or him to just do it.

He destroyed the suggestion in his own mind a moment later. No, that way lay nothing but madness. He would have to explain about not only Ethan, but Malfoy's involvement with the warlocks, and Scorpius, and all sorts of other things that he had no desire to mention to Andromeda.

_Especially when Teddy could be going mad, _he thought, with a quick glance at the bed. Teddy had stopped murmuring to himself and was sleeping, but restlessly, with one arm flung over his face as if he wanted to hide from the world.

He knew without Andromeda saying so that they had only a short time to brew the potion. They had to do it, if it was the madness, before the fever broke permanently and Teddy went back to "normal." That would mean the madness had permanently stained his mind and would be part of his actions forever.

Teddy writhed and cried out again with the heat. Harry leaned forwards and cast another Fever-Cooling Charm.

* * *

Draco still hadn't decided what to do about Potter when the next owl found him lying wakeful in the spare bedroom of Theodore's flat. Draco tore it open, his heart quicker than it should have been.

Only to find that this letter came from Harry Potter, Senior Auror and Savior of the World, instead of Harry Potter, man who used inexplicable false names and snarled at him in alleyways.

_Dear Malfoy, _

_I hate to ask you for a favor. However, if you don't want to grant the favor—which is totally understandable—than you can think of it as fulfilling one of the life-debts that you owe me instead. I only mention that because of the recent history that we have between us which makes this harder, I understand, on you._

_Your cousin Teddy Lupin, the son of your cousin Nymphadora Tonks and the grandson of your aunt Andromeda, is sick. We think that he has the Black madness, which could be permanent if we can't cure it with a blood potion Andromeda found. However, that potion needs Teddy's blood, Andromeda's blood, and the blood of someone descended from the Most Ancient and Noble House of Black who's not in the direct lineage. So no siblings or parents or grandparents or children._

_Will you please provide the blood for Teddy? I think you would have to come to Andromeda's house to deliver the blood. It would take too long for an owl to fly that distance carrying a vial._

_I await your decision, and if you do it of your own free will and not because of a life-debt, then I swear that you shall have whatever you desire of me in return. _

There was a signature this time, as sharp as though at the bottom of a report, in letters Draco was surprised weren't twelve feet high. _Harry Potter._

Draco lowered the letter to the bed and stared at the ceiling again, swallowing as though that would help him make a decision.

He wanted to fling the letter away from him. He wanted to burn it. He wanted to firecall Potter and explain all the many, many, _many _ways that this was stupid and why he should never have sent the letter in the first place.

He wanted to wake Theodore up and make his excuses now, and Floo home immediately. All the conflicting desires surged back and forth in his head, like ocean waves, battering him and then darting away again, and Draco shut his eyes and gave a long, ragged sigh.

Conflicting desires, but only one at the bottom of them, one that Draco knew would probably always have won out. He wasn't going to write back to Potter. He was going to sleep until morning—only a few hours away now—and then get up, make his excuses to Theodore, and go home. He would give the blood to Teddy.

He would do it of his own free will, and without being compelled by a life-debt, and then ask why Potter had written to him under the guise of Ethan Starfall. All the reasons, including why Potter had invented that name and life in the first place. Draco thought he did know the general outlines of the story, but that wasn't enough, not for a story that had changed his own life so completely. He wanted to know _everything_.

As he lay there and managed to relax, he could feel sleep creeping up on him, mingled with a satisfaction that had the shape of a held knife.

He would know. And he would hold onto his temper this time. Maybe he would leave Britain immediately after his interview with Potter, to give himself time to react to the news safely far away.

He was going to _know_.

* * *

Harry woke up with a start. For a second, he didn't know what had awakened him. He certainly hadn't meant to fall asleep.

He gave a glance at Teddy's bed, and saw that he still twisted and writhed. That was a good thing, in its way. It meant that the attack of the madness, if that was what it was, hadn't ended yet, and they still had time to make the potion that might cure Teddy.

_If _Malfoy ever responded.

Harry rubbed his eyes. And then he nearly leaped to his feet as someone knocked again on the door of Teddy's room. He licked his lips, staring at it. He knew Andromeda wouldn't knock even if she thought he was asleep. Perhaps a Healer from St. Mungo's had found out about Teddy and come to try and "cure" his "werewolf" symptoms after all.

"Come in," said Harry, and the door opened, and Malfoy stood there.

They looked at each other with what felt like years of silence between them. Harry refused to speak first, and Malfoy finally turned and looked at Teddy's bed, nodding a little. "That's my cousin?"

"Yes." Harry held back all the harsh words about how a decent person would have visited their only family before now, and how it should be obvious. It wasn't like he and Malfoy had got on recently, and it wasn't like it was all Malfoy's fault.

Malfoy examined Teddy as minutely as though he was looking for signs of the Black family features. Then he turned back to Harry.

"I'm here to donate my blood to the potion. No life-debt required. I would have done it before now if I'd had any idea of the need."

"Andromeda only looked up the potion and what we needed to do yesterday," said Harry. He felt oddly as though he was in a dream, or a vision, one of the ones that he used to get when he was connected to Voldemort, except he already knew the conclusion of this one. "And what favor do you want from me?"

Malfoy gave him a thin smile, and spoke the words that Harry already knew he would. "The true origins of Ethan Starfall—name and children and all."


	16. Reworking

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Sixteen—Reworking_

"Tell me what needs to be done to add my blood to the potion."

Malfoy was really remarkably calm, Harry thought, watching him out of the corner of his eye. He sat on the same couch as Harry without apparent disdain and watched Andromeda cutting her palm to add blood to the shallow dish on the table in her lab. Teddy was under a Sleeping Charm upstairs.

Andromeda seemed startled that Malfoy had come so quickly and agreed to help, but after a long, keen glance at Harry, she apparently attributed it to one of the debts that Malfoy owed Harry. Harry was happy to let her keep thinking that way. His mind mostly focused on Teddy and how they were going to survive the constant crisis, but every now and then, it leaped into the future and the moment when he would have to tell Malfoy the truth.

He could almost hear the laughter now.

"You need to cut your hand, like I did," said Andromeda, and Malfoy reached for his wand. Harry shifted a little away in spite of himself, and caught his breath.

Malfoy heard it. His eyes came up, dark with some emotion that Harry didn't know if he was competent to name, and held Harry's for a long second. His smile was deeply twisted.

Harry looked away with a flushed face. He was doing what he _could, _he silently argued against the laughter in the back of his head that had nothing to do with Starfall or what Malfoy or Andromeda would say.

"No, not now," Andromeda was murmuring when Harry turned back to reality. "When I have the potion ready. My blood serves as the base. Your blood is the catalyst. And Teddy's blood binds the potion to him."

"If I'd known that I had relatives who understood Potions theory, I would have visited earlier," Malfoy drawled, putting his wand back in his pocket.

Harry clamped his lip between his teeth. Then he did the same with his tongue. From the glance sideways that Malfoy gave at him, he _had _noticed.

"You can disbelieve me all you like," he said. "It's still true."

Harry stared at his hands and said nothing. What he _wanted _to say was that it didn't matter if it was true; the whole point was that Malfoy should have visited his family regardless of whether they knew Potions theory. And he had known about them in general. He had never visited.

_What right do you have to tell other people how they should behave?_

Harry winced, and kept staring determinedly at his clasped hands. Yes, that was true, and it was also true that he would never get anywhere if he kept scolding himself for his past mistakes. Teddy was the important one here. Not him, and not Malfoy, and not all the ghosts of the past that he felt crowding around him.

"There," said Andromeda at last, stepping back from the potion and rapping her stirring rod hard against the rim. "That's all we can do." She turned to Malfoy.

He rose to his feet and walked over to the cauldron, drawing his wand again as he did so. Harry watched him, blinking a little. He had expected to see some shadow of violence around him, or be reminded of the way that Malfoy had tried to curse him in the alley.

_Even people who act mental some of the time can be normal the rest._

Harry half-nodded. He would just hope that this burst of normality could last until the brewing was done and they had all they needed from Malfoy for Teddy's potion. Maybe he wouldn't try to strangle Harry until they were in private.

* * *

The cut across his palm hurt, of course, and so did squeezing the skin so that the right amount of blood oozed out and into the potion, but Draco experienced the pain with what felt like something other than his skin. The intense focus of Potter's gaze on him hurt more.

_What does he think? That I'd lash out and tip the cauldron over and deny my little cousin the healing he needs?_

Maybe he did, at that. He might not expect much from a man who had tried to paralyze him, and he _had _considered using the life-debts to force Draco's hand.

Draco finally finished the squeeze, and his aunt took over, nodding rapidly and saying, "That's perfect, yes." She added a pinch of powdered willow leaves from a vial, a great settler, and began to stir the potion again.

Draco took a step back, glancing over his shoulder at Potter. Potter promptly yanked his eyes away guiltily and stuffed his hands into his pockets, as though he suspected himself of a secret desire to touch Draco.

_It would make as much sense as anything else he'd done, like making up a false name and writing to me after he found out who I was._

That was the part Draco found hardest to understand. Potter had always been the person in their weird letter-writing bond with the superior knowledge, at least until the very end. Why had he decided that Draco was _worth _responding to, once he knew? If it had started out as a joke, it had become something more, because the man Draco had confronted in the alley had been far from humor.

There was a puff from the potion at the same moment as there was a piercing cry from the room above them, where Draco had believed they'd left the little Lupin lying under a Sleeping Charm to prevent him from hurting himself.

Potter was on his feet with the same speed Draco had seen in his battle with Moonstar, flying towards the door. Andromeda remained with the potion, although her shoulders tightened enough to make her face look cramped. Draco understood why. The potion had its procedures and couldn't be abandoned no matter how imperative it seemed to someone else right now.

"Shall I go?" Draco murmured to her, this woman who looked nothing like his mother but had the same expression on her face that his mother had had many times with other things.

"Yes, please do," Andromeda said, and sighed in what could have been relief as he ran out the door. For that alone, Draco was glad he had come.

* * *

Harry's first thought was that Teddy had awoken, still had aches and pains from the fever, and been distressed to find himself alone.

Now, it seemed, he should have _wished _for that, because it would have been preferable to what was actually going on.

Teddy thrashed and squirmed and shouted in the middle of the bed, his arms flying in all directions, his face so distorted with fear and hate that Harry didn't recognize him. Or, yes, he did. He looked a little like the portrait of Mrs. Black.

"_Get away from me!_" he shouted, the minute his eyes fell on Harry.

_At least that banishes any thought that he might not have the Black madness and the potion could be useless, _Harry decided, and the next second, he deliberately flicked his brain into the same calm, clear coldness that he used when he was approaching innocent victims of a criminal's abuse who might try to attack him to protect their "leader." There were ways to harmlessly restrain people like that, and he used one of them now.

"_Vinculum mollis_," he cast, and the chain that unfolded shimmering in the middle of the room looked more like a rope, a rope made of soft and glowing light. It settled around Teddy's arms and pulled them away from his face, and then more tendrils of it snaked towards his feet and pulled them gently towards the edges of the bed. It didn't actually bind him, but it did hold him in a comfortable position where he would have trouble moving. Even the thrashing was reduced to little more than a few jerks and twitches.

"That's an interesting spell."

Malfoy coming in behind Harry shouldn't have scared him so badly, but at least he thought he managed to limit his leap to a few inches. He came down and saw Malfoy smirking at him. It was the first natural expression, or at least the only expression Harry had seen that he _expected _to see on the bastard's face, in a long time.

"It's an Auror spell," Harry responded shortly, and circled around to the side, watching Teddy intently. The first fit had passed, he thought. Teddy was lying there with his head tossing from side to the side on the pillow and his teeth bared against an imaginary opponent, but at least he wasn't lashing out anymore.

"I see."

Harry didn't look at Malfoy's face. It would only confuse him, at this point. "Andromeda's almost finished with the potion?" he asked.

"You didn't read the instructions? You don't know?"

Despite telling himself over and over that it either didn't matter what Malfoy thought or he should understand why Malfoy might be feeling a _bit _defensive, a sharp prickling sensation still rang through Harry's body, and he glared at him. "I trusted that Andromeda knew what she was doing. I'll leave Potions brewing to the experts."

Malfoy leaned against the wall. "It's almost done."

_Why he couldn't have told me that in the first place… _But they weren't destined to get along. Harry turned back to checking on Teddy's bonds, and when Teddy snapped at air like the wolf they had feared for so long that he would turn out to be, he began murmuring soft, soothing words to him. "It's okay. I know that you think the burning is never going to stop right now, but it's really okay. Your grandmother is coming with something to ease the burning. Your cousin Draco is here. He came to see you. Do you remember your grandmother talking about the Blacks and how you're descended from them? That blood's causing the problems now. But it'll go away, we have the cure."

Teddy did seem to calm down a little when Harry was talking to him like that. Harry let one hand rest on Teddy's shoulder and went on talking.

* * *

Seeing the fiercely protective, almost enraptured expression on Potter's face as he stared at the boy, Draco had to wonder whether Potter had got divorced because his affection for his wife couldn't compete with his affection for his godson.

But it didn't matter. What mattered was the door opening and Andromeda coming in, bearing a steaming goblet of the potion between careful hands. Draco nodded when he saw it. The goblet was of gold with rubies gleaming in the sides, and although the old legend that drinking healing potions out of golden cups probably wasn't true, she would want to do everything she could to make sure in this situation.

"Harry," said Andromeda, and the way she said it made prickles travel up and down Draco's spine. It seemed odd that his aunt should be using a tone like that for anyone who wasn't a relative. "The potion is here. You'll have to move aside so I can give it to Teddy."

For a long second, Draco didn't think he would. Potter's hand stayed on Teddy's forehead, and he tensed as if Andromeda would have to fight him. But then he gave a curt nod and stepped away. He still had one hand curled as though a forehead for him to stroke would materialize under it.

Andromeda bent over Teddy and held the goblet to his lips. He turned his head aside and spat at her. Potter started forwards.

"No, since you've bound him, I'm competent to manage this part," said Andromeda, without appearing to pay attention to Potter at all.

Potter halted. Draco caught a glimpse of his face, lost, haunted, confused, before Potter turned away and walked over to another corner of the room.

Draco himself, most interested in the results of the potion he had helped brew at the moment, watched as Andromeda murmured to Teddy and massaged his throat to help him swallow. Teddy blinked at her resentfully, but already he seemed to be calming down. Draco hoped that was due to the potion's effects and not the "recovery" period Andromeda had told him about, which meant more madness later.

"There." Andromeda put down the goblet as if that had been the burden she was carrying and turned back to Potter. "You can release him now."

Potter watched her, mistrustful as a wild thing, before he nodded and waved his wand. The bonds on Teddy dissolved. The boy immediately curled up and huddled into one corner of his bed, watching them like a trapped animal.

Potter was wise enough not to go back right away. He stood there and started talking again, though, looking at the wall as if it and not Teddy was his target. "I think you can probably feel your mind calming down, can't you? You can feel the poison shrinking and getting smaller and smaller. You can feel it draining out of your blood. You can think about it draining away, if you want, if you think that works better…"

And Teddy's eyes shut, and his head turned to the side. Draco thought for a second he would say something, or try to bite again. Instead, he began to breathe the measured breaths of natural sleep.

Andromeda nodded, holding her hand to her mouth. There were tears in her eyes, and she looked so like his mother after the war, when she had first seen Draco walking towards her out of the wreckage of Hogwarts, that Draco had to turn away sharply. He paused when he felt her hand on his arm.

"I couldn't have brewed the potion without you," she said. "Thank you. Thank you for coming and donating your blood. It's more powerful when it comes from such a close relative, after all."

Draco knew he probably wouldn't be able to face whatever expression she was wearing _now_. So he muttered something noncommittal, turned to Potter, and made a beckoning gesture at him.

He knew Potter saw him, but Potter stood there and gazed at Teddy for long moments before he finally gave a sad half-smile, turned around, and walked after Draco. "All right," he said. "I'm ready."

Draco tried to forget the funny feeling _that _gave him in his stomach, too, as they walked towards what was probably a private sitting room, where Potter could tell him all about Ethan Starfall.

Draco's determination to know was by now mingled with curiosity. Potter didn't lack for people he loved, and it didn't seem as though Teddy was prone, most of the time, to dangerous illnesses that would lead him to make up children who could never be hurt. Why would he have to make up a family?

* * *

Harry collapsed on the couch in the first room he came to, the drawing room. He felt as though someone had poured scalding water all through his insides. He had dreaded the revelation to Malfoy when it first came up.

Now, after Teddy? That was the least of his worries. Malfoy was free to laugh if he wanted to. Harry still didn't think he would spread it around because doing so would implicate him, and Harry would _know _he was the source of any rumor about Ethan Starfall. And Harry doubted that Malfoy was stupid enough to attack him physically again.

Malfoy closed the door to the drawing room between them and stood there, leaning against it. Harry jerked his head at a chair in front of him, but Malfoy shook his head and remained standing.

Harry sighed. He had hoped for a little more friendliness between them, after Malfoy had hoped Teddy, but he should have remembered. Malfoy was only here because he wanted the payment Harry had promised, not because Teddy mattered to him. And that would probably go on being true no matter how many times Harry wished otherwise.

He kept his voice low, careful. "What do you know about my divorce?"

"It happened," Malfoy replied, and stood waiting again.

_Yes, well, he doesn't exactly have to give me any help, does he? _Harry grimaced wryly to himself and nodded. "It did. It happened because I'm unable to have children."

For the first time, Malfoy showed something of a reaction, his eyes fluttering open and his hand rising as though he was going to touch his throat. Harry waited in turn. He didn't know what Malfoy was thinking or feeling right now. He might as well go on reminding himself of that, and try to understand better later.

Malfoy finally croaked out, "But I thought—surely someone would have reported that, if it was true."

Harry shrugged. "There are some rewards for fame, as well as perils. It was a combination of Dark hexes that made me infertile. St. Mungo's kept quiet, and I don't think most of the Healers knew anyway." It was easier to talk about this than he would have thought. Maybe the three years had done enough to heal him, or Teddy and how important his survival was had, to burn some of Harry's reluctance away. "But Ginny couldn't accept it. She wanted children of her own, and if I couldn't sire them, there was no other acceptable method."

That was as far as he was going to get into truth, too. Ginny's secrets were her own. If Malfoy was so concerned about them, he could go and ask her.

The vision that created in Harry's mind made him smile, and he nearly missed Malfoy's next insistent question. "What made you make up Ethan Starfall?"

Harry blinked, and answered honestly. "I thought you'd grasp it on your own. I wanted children, and I wanted a life that was peaceful and quiet and had a happy marriage. So I started writing as Ethan in a journal, creating this whole other life. When you sent that letter, I just drew on that life and let Ethan speak through me to answer you." He had never seen any expression like the one on Malfoy's face before, so he added, "He's gone now. I haven't felt any urge to write as him since the whole confrontation we had in the alley."

Well, maybe that wasn't the whole truth. He'd felt the urge; what he'd lost was the ability. But that was also the kind of thing that Malfoy didn't need to hear. He had heard more than enough to make him pucker up, if the way he was blinking was any indication.

* * *

_I can't imagine why he did that. Why he responded that way. And why Weasley was so set on having her own children that way. They could have adopted Teddy, or she could have enjoyed the benefits of being Potter's sole focus of attention, without children to steal it._

That was the way Astoria might have felt, though, Draco had to concede. Without the pressure for heirs, Draco and his wife might have stayed married. And she might have liked his attention enough not to pursue her inventing career so strongly.

That left Draco with more questions to ask. "Did living an imaginary life really content you?"

Potter snapped out of the staring contest he was having with the wall. "Eventually, it felt like living the life I wanted," he said simply. "I had to live it on paper and out of sight of anyone else, but I was keeping the secret of not being able to have children of my own from most people, too. It was just one more secret."

Draco shook his head, at a loss. "But your friends didn't know about Starfall?"

"No," said Potter, and turned his hand upwards when Draco went on staring at him. "Yes, they knew I couldn't have children. But it would have seemed childish and pathetic to them, what I was doing. Just making up imaginary children wasn't enough to compensate for my loss. They told me that I should get married again, to someone who wouldn't care about having a blood family. But I had the family I wanted."

There was a distant look in his eyes as he turned away, and Draco was about to ask another question when he murmured, "But Teddy is more important than all that. I can't believe I didn't realize it before."

"You thought imaginary children qualified you to write to me." Draco was trying to make his own indignation flare again, but it was much harder than he'd thought it would be. It was as if the spark inside him had gone out, making only a damp, bitter place he was trying to light on fire.

"I thought that I could," said Potter. "Or I thought Ethan could. I think I was making the decision as Ethan."

"Who's imaginary."

Potter nodded, but he refused to fuel Draco's anger by getting angry himself. "I wasn't thinking clearly. Teddy showed me that. I was still mourning the loss of those children I couldn't have and then those children I thought I _did _have. But Teddy is the one I have. Teddy's the one who actually exists. I need to think about that."

Draco pushed stubbornly on. He was very glad that Potter had had this little awakening and all, he told himself sternly, but that didn't have anything to do with why Potter had contacted him in the first place.

Except that the rage he had felt before, fueled by his son not wanting to be a Malfoy and the warlocks and the mockery he'd sensed in the names of Starfall's children, was so dusty and small and nonexistent right now. As fictional as Potter's family.

"And Scorpius is the one I have. The one I was asking you for help with. What if your advice had been harmful, and had hurt my son?"

Potter abruptly stood and shook his head. "I've reached the limit of what I owed you. The explanation of what happened and why I wrote to you and why you couldn't find any trace of Starfall's existence and why I made him up. You know something now that very few people know. I don't have to answer anything else."

"This is _real_," Draco said, and leaned forwards, blocking the door when Potter tried to get past him. Yes, it was better like this, with Potter about to breathe fire and stirring the fire inside Draco in return. "Scorpius could have been hurt, the way Teddy could have been if I didn't come."

Potter reached out and hit his hand hard, knocking it away from the door. Draco shook it, and wondered if they were about to have another fight.

But instead, Potter said, "I would never have given you advice I thought was harmful, and I hope you have better _sense _than to follow harmful advice about your son. Or to go on following it if it proved harmful the first time." His voice was a hiss.

"This is about what could have happened—"

"Which I just learned is less important than what did," Potter said, and this time, it was his voice alone and not a web or spell that held Draco against the wall. "It's enough. What we have is enough. You have the truth and your son, and I hope you have the ability to raise him better this time around. I have Teddy. Go away and be a better father to your son." He paused, then added, "The way I'm going to try to be a better godfather."

He left. Draco didn't think he would have had the strength to hold him in the room even if he had wanted to. His head was whirling too badly.


	17. Sparks

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Seventeen—Sparks_

"He's still asleep?"

Andromeda touched Harry's hand, and made him look at her. "He's going to be that way for a while, if the potion worked," she said. "He's going to have to overcome the Black madness, which poisons his blood like—well, like a disease. And the potion itself is hard to absorb. Swallowing that much wizard blood always is. The only thing that makes it easier is that the blood comes from the veins of people closely related to him."

"Thank you," Harry said, automatically. He knew she was trying to reassure him, and that he should look more grateful. It was just hard to take his eyes from Teddy, to know that he was lying there, twitching and growling a little under his breath sometimes, but not actually suffering. "The longer he takes to wake up, the better?"

"In a way. Recovery was always apparently quick for someone afflicted by the madness." Andromeda's voice dropped. "I remember the way my sister looked when she had it. It didn't last long, the fever, and by the next morning she was smiling sweetly. But hardly a week later, I caught her torturing our Kneazle and laughing about it."

Harry nodded again, and looked at Teddy. His hair was a dull black now, the way it often got when he was in a bad mood. But of course, he wasn't awake to change it to a different color the moment something took his fancy to make him do so. Harry had to remember that.

"Go _relax, _Harry." Andromeda shoved him gently away from the bed. "You need to sit down, eat something, and then go to bed."

"But what if I'm not here when he wakes up?" Harry leaned around her to look at Teddy again, and was just barely aware that Andromeda's lips were tight with exasperation when she gave him another shove.

"Someone will be. I'll wake you when I'm ready to go to bed, if he's not awake yet. But remember, it will be hours yet."

Harry hesitated. But he remembered the stupid mistakes he'd made in the past, both in his job and with Ginny. He had been at his worst when he was impulsive and riding the edge, and right now he was doing that, even if it was lack of sleep forcing him into it instead of adrenaline or tragedy.

"All right," he murmured at last, and Andromeda gave him a real smile before she shepherded him out of the room and shut the door.

Malfoy was waiting at the top of the stairs, his arms folded but his gaze as mild as though he'd only been waiting for Harry a little while.

Harry twitched with the impulse to say something, but managed to make his voice come out smooth and nearly uncaring. "What do you want now, Malfoy?"

"Strange as it may seem," Malfoy drawled, "I'm actually more interested in talking to the aunt and cousin I barely know than you."

"Teddy's asleep," Harry said, but waved a hand tiredly when Malfoy looked at him. "But Andromeda's awake, yet. Go in. Just be careful that you don't wake him." Even though part of him would be thrilled to see Teddy awake, and this early, the rest of him knew that Andromeda's words were wise.

"I know how to act around patients," Malfoy snapped, and then slipped into Teddy's room and shut the door behind him before Harry could ask about where he'd learned _that_. It wasn't as though Malfoy had trained as a Healer.

But what did it matter? Harry didn't think he was about to harm Teddy on purpose, not after giving his own blood to save him, and Andromeda was there to make sure that Malfoy did no accidental damage.

So Harry tottered and wavered down the corridor, and ended up crashed into the embrace of the bed that was always his when he visited, and oblivion dragged him down into further oblivion so neatly that he barely got the chance to realize he hadn't eaten.

* * *

"I appreciate what you did for Teddy."

Draco, his eyes on that face that looked, in some ways, like an older version of Scorpius's, nodded in silence. His aunt watched him from the side. She didn't speak any more after that. Draco wondered if she was waiting for him to get bored and leave. Or maybe say something haughty about the size of the house, which was nothing compared with Malfoy Manor.

Draco didn't intend to do either. He couldn't believe he had never thought about it before, that he had other family out there besides Scorpius and his parents, that these were people he could get to _know_. Yes, he had friends, but they had lives of their own, and it was a more ephemeral connection than with family anyway.

Draco finally pulled himself from his contemplation of Teddy and turned to Andromeda. She was the one who owned the house, and the one who would have to give him the permission he was going to request. "Would it be all right if I visited again?"

His aunt had been leaning tiredly against the bed, contemplating Teddy with an expression Draco didn't think was different from his own. In seconds she was upright again, facing him with her hands folded in a way that left one dangerously near her wand. "You will be welcome if you leave your feelings about blood and werewolves at the door," she said. "Not otherwise."

Draco stared at her and said the first thing that came to his mind. "I haven't said _anything_ about that since I've been here!"

"And Teddy hasn't been awake to hear you, either." Andromeda's lip lifted in a way that showed her teeth. Draco doubted that was a coincidence. "You must think I'm stupid. I saw the way that you looked at Harry. You haven't left all your old hatreds behind. I _won't _have you inflicting them on my grandson."

Draco shook his head in wordless wonder. How was he going to explain to her that his problems with Potter were of a much more recent date than the end of the war?

He wasn't. That would remain private until such time as something or someone else forced it into the open, Draco decided. It wasn't worth the tangle and the fuss. He said, "My rivalry with Potter is something different. He isn't family. Teddy is. And you. I want to get to know both of you."

Andromeda looked at him as though she had Legilimency. Come to that, Draco wasn't sure she didn't. He'd had another aunt who could practice it, after all. He tried to stand tall and confident and look non-threatening at the same time. He wasn't sure he succeeded. It was a long time since he had thought that last one was a desirable trait.

"Very well," said Andromeda. "But you should know that Harry is Teddy's godfather, and involved in his life frequently. If you don't think you can get along with him, then your time with Teddy is going to be limited."

Draco slowly nodded. He supposed that seeing Potter around wouldn't be the worst fate ever. Perhaps seeing him more often would actually be something that would settle Draco's agitated mind, and let him find out more about the strange confession Potter had poured out to him.

"Do you want to rest?" he added. "I had a full night's sleep last night, and you probably didn't. I can watch over Teddy."

For a moment, he thought Andromeda was going to say something, but she closed her lips into a small line and nodded. "I want you to wake me or Harry in a minute if he gets up, mind," she added, and turned towards the door.

"I will," Draco said, and pulled over a chair and settled down, chin in hand, hearing the door softly shut behind him, and wondering what Scorpius would say to know that he had an older cousin.

_Scorpius. _

Draco took a deep breath. When this was done, when Teddy was awake and he knew for certain that the potion had worked and he wasn't about to lose a member of his family, then yes, he would go home. And speak to his son.

It would be more of an adventure than coming here or trying to find Ethan Starfall or going to stay with Theodore had been.

* * *

Harry woke hard, with his heartbeat jolting through him. For a second, he couldn't remember what was closest in time, Teddy's potion or the conversation with Malfoy or the blood magic he had performed to find the Dark Snake.

_None of those. _The closest thing in time was Teddy resting comfortably against his pillow, lips a little red from the bloody potion.

Harry did cast a _Tempus _Charm, and glared at what he saw when the numbers flickered into being above the bed. Someone had let him sleep far too long. He stood up and began dressing efficiently, his hands working without pause. He would go and check on Teddy. He would feed him, if he was awake, and stay and talk to him. And then he would go back to work, because he thought he needed them both now, his job and Teddy, to keep himself going. He didn't want to fall back into the numb shock that had overtaken him after the loss of Ethan.

He stepped out into the corridor and nearly ran straight into Andromeda. She jumped, then smiled at him. "Apologies, Harry. I thought you might like to see Teddy now. Draco told me he's awake."

"Malfoy is still here?" Harry asked in disbelief, but started walking without waiting for her to stand still and answer him. The corridors of Andromeda's house, decorated with plain brown and grey colors, had never seemed so long.

"He wants to get to know Teddy. Say what I will about my sister, she would have taught her son to value the importance of blood connections." Andromeda gave a little smile. "And I trust him enough to leave Teddy with him while I sleep again. I'm sorry, I've greeted Teddy and I'd like to spend more time with him, but brewing the potion took too much of my magic." She drifted down the corridor.

Harry flinched despite himself. He knew Andromeda didn't mean it that way, but it was just…

Malfoy had a blood connection to Teddy, and Harry didn't. He had a son, and he had a cousin, too. He had an aunt. He had parents. He might even have other wizarding relatives that Harry didn't know about. He had been more closely related to _Sirius _than Harry was.

For a second, Harry felt as though he was taking another devastating fall down from a cliff.

And then he snapped himself out of it. That really bloody didn't matter, the way that it didn't matter he couldn't have children of his own. He had a family that would always welcome him, whether or not they were blood. And Malfoy had ignored Teddy and Andromeda for years. Harry could respect that he wanted to repair that gap, but he was going to have a time doing it.

Or so Harry thought, until he opened the door of Teddy's room.

Teddy was laughing and reaching out to touch one of a number of multi-colored bubbles floating in front of him. Harry stared. Inside the bubble was a miniature castle. Hogwarts. Around it floated what looked like wizards on winged horses, but that was the most Harry could make out from this distance.

"Harry!" Teddy said, and looked at Harry with bright grey eyes and hair turning a happy turquoise. "Cousin Draco said that he would show me all the places that I'm going to go visit when I get out of bed!"

_Cousin Draco._

Harry bit his tongue and managed a smile. It was easier when he looked at Teddy instead of Malfoy. "That's great, Teddy. Do you want something to eat?" There was no tray on Teddy's bed, at least, or on the table beside it.

"Yes!" Teddy squirmed as if he was going to get off the bed, but Malfoy coughed gently, and Teddy settled back with a sigh. "Will you get me something other than porridge? Grandmother said that I could only have porridge, but I can have other things, right?"

"Yes, you can have things other than porridge," Harry said, and had to smile. The way Teddy was bouncing up and down in the bed, the sunshine color his hair was turning, made up for anything. Harry could keep Malfoy cut out of his vision if he just turned his head a little to the side. "Do you have any preference?"

"Potter, if Andromeda said that he could have only—"

Teddy interrupted before Malfoy could build up a good head of lecture-steam. "She only said that because she thought I would have trouble digesting it," he said. "I know I don't. That means that I can have other things! I want bangers!"

"Potter," Malfoy said in an undertone.

"I know what I'm doing," Harry said, and hoped that his voice was neutral, though from the way Malfoy paused and looked at him, he doubted it. "I won't make them too greasy." He turned and gestured with his wand, and pots started rattling and clattering down in the kitchen.

"But I like them best when they're greasy." Teddy only made the protest in the tone of someone who was okay with not getting what he wanted, though, and flung himself on his stomach on the bed, turning back to Malfoy. "Cousin Draco is showing me neat magic. Why didn't _you _ever show me neat magic, Uncle Harry?"

_Because all I know are horrible Auror spells and some of the Dark Arts we're allowed to use, and it's not right to exhibit those in front of children._

But Harry knew that wasn't a good answer and anyway, he _had _shown Teddy some interesting spells. It only made sense that Teddy, enthralled right now with the magic that Malfoy was showing him, would forget that.

"I must have forgotten," Harry said lightly, and turned and cast the spells that would make the bangers start preparing themselves.

"Impressive that you can cast that sort of magic from a distance."

Harry's shoulders tensed at the sound of Malfoy's voice, but Teddy didn't notice, and immediately started boasting, his previous disappointment in Harry forgotten. "Oh, yeah, Uncle Harry's great like that! He can Summon things from behind locked doors, and he can create these little paper animals that chase each other, and he can bounce glasses up and down without breaking them—"

Harry, his face thoroughly on fire by now, interrupted. Malfoy was going to think he was the most conceited thing on the face of the planet if Teddy kept on. "Now, Teddy, it isn't nice to brag."

"But I'm bragging about you, I'm not bragging about _myself_," Teddy said, as though that settled it, and went back to talking. "And I know that he does all these heroic things in the Aurors even if he never tells me about them because he thinks they're too bloody for my ears or something."

Harry rubbed his forehead. Teddy was a prank-player and a little manipulator, and apparently better at eavesdropping than any of them had realized. He and Andromeda—and probably Ron and Hermione—would have to put up stronger wards in the future.

"I look forward to hearing about them," Malfoy said.

It took Harry a full minute to realize what he meant, and then he turned around and stared sharply at him. He knew Malfoy understood the glare, but he only looked back blandly, and then faced Teddy again and said, "Well, after you eat, then I'll leave. I think that you're ready for that, right? You're healing enough."

"But I want you to stay," said Teddy, pushing his lip out in what Harry knew from experience to be a deadly pout. "I didn't want you to _go_."

Malfoy hesitated, and Harry interrupted as smoothly as he could. "I know that Mr. Malfoy has lots of things to do, Teddy. He came all the way from—a long way away when he heard you were sick. He probably wants to go back and finish up whatever his business was there, right?" He caught Malfoy's eye.

Malfoy gave him a look that was properly vicious, but his voice was soft and sweet. "Oh, I should go and see my son, certainly. I haven't seen him in a while. But I wanted to sit up my next visit with Teddy as soon as possible. I think I'm done with traveling out of Britain for a while."

"You have a son? I have another cousin?" Teddy looked absolutely delighted. "What's his name? Does he have blond hair like you? Does he like jokes? Does he like having jokes played on him?"

"Teddy," Harry began warningly. Not that he knew anything about Scorpius except for what Malfoy's letters had told him, but he did know that Scorpius was younger than Teddy, and they had enough trouble with getting Teddy to leave Hugo and Rose alone sometimes.

"His name is Scorpius, and I think he might like jokes," Malfoy said, sounding soft and a little sad. "I haven't been as good a dad as I should. I haven't spent as much time with him as I should, so I really don't know him that well, you see."

_Absolute bastard. Manipulative bastard. _It didn't soothe Harry's temper to know that Teddy had come by his streak of manipulation honestly. He turned his back without speaking and caught the plate as it came barreling up the stairs.

Luckily, Teddy tired almost immediately after he ate, and was happy enough to lean back on his pillow and say good-bye to his "Cousin Draco." Harry nodded and led Malfoy out of the room in silence. He would put up with him if he had to, if he came back for repeat visits, but he hoped that he could time his own to avoid Malfoy.

"I look forward to seeing you, as well."

Harry turned. Now they were out in the corridor, and snores were already coming from Teddy's room, so he let some hint of his real mood out. Malfoy fell back a step with his arms folded across his chest when Harry leveled him with a glare. "_Really? _I might understand why you want to reconnect with Teddy and Andromeda, but what the _fuck_, Malfoy? I've told you the truth. There's nothing else that you can require from me."

* * *

_It's so strange. He's so strange. I want to understand it better. And maybe I can—_

Draco cut himself off. It was hard to admit even in the privacy of his own head, although he had when he was sitting beside the sleeping Teddy and had nothing else to do, that he might want Potter's help with Scorpius in the future. No, the advice hadn't been bad, even if he was still angry that Potter had written to him and lied about his experience with children.

But Draco was the one who had to raise Scorpius now. And he had to go home, not stand here and answer Potter.

"I intend to come over and visit," Draco said, with a serenity that he thought was praiseworthy when he had a fuming Potter in front of him. "I thought that sometimes I would probably see you."

"I can time my visits so that we don't run into each other." Potter folded his arms and glared balefully at Draco. "Just tell me when you're going to be here, and I'll make sure that I'm elsewhere."

Draco took a step forwards before he thought about it. Then he smiled and made himself relax against the wall. "What would that do to Teddy?" he asked. "He probably wants his cousin and his uncle to get along."

"Look, I _understand, _all right?" Potter's hand bounced off the wall, and Draco jumped. But Potter's eyes didn't hold the murderous gleam that they would have if he had thought that Draco seriously intended to hurt Teddy. There was nothing there but raw pain. "You have the blood connection to him that I don't. I _understand that. _I just want to make sure that we don't fight in front of Teddy."

Draco frowned blankly at him. "You hate me so much that you can't stand to be in the same room as me and Scorpius?" he guessed wildly.

"You have a blood connection," Potter said, and for a second, his eyes flickered to Teddy's door. "Andromeda was the one who mentioned it to me. I don't."

"Potter, you idiot," Draco said, ignoring the way those eyes of green death swung to him again. "I'm not trying to step in here and take Teddy away from you. I want to know my family."

"Fine," said Potter, his body relaxing in a way too abrupt to be natural. Draco wondered if he had had practice stepping back from the edge in his job, or doing his private writing career as Ethan Starfall. There were simply too many things about Potter that he didn't know. "I think Teddy should know you and Scorpius, too. But there's no reason that you have to get to know me better at the same time."

Draco frowned. He hated the feeling of being stripped vulnerable that Potter's words were giving him. He supposed that he had to go ahead and try to go along with it anyway, though. "I thought—I mean, I find you intriguing. I'd like to know more about you."

"Pull the other one, Malfoy."

Draco stepped back a little. He still thought that what Potter had confessed was strange, but he wouldn't put himself out there for someone who was only intent on rejecting his overtures anyway. "Remember what I said. I don't intend to drive you out of the house." He paused, and dangled another piece of bait in front of Potter that he thought Potter would probably find hard to resist. "And I thought you might like to meet the boy I was asking you for advice about."

Potter paused. "Maybe I might at that. But not if we're going to fight," he added, before Draco could add anything triumphant, and then strode down the stairs.

Draco sighed quietly and went upstairs to say farewell to Andromeda, if she was awake. He was trying to make the best of a bad situation. He was trying to soothe curiosity that still existed. He was trying to do something that he thought would bring happiness to his son and his little cousin, and maybe his aunt and himself, if he did that right.

Trust Potter to kick against all the restraints.


	18. The Dark Snake

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Eighteen—The Dark Snake_

Kingsley waved away the apology when Harry tried to make it, and pointed Harry to the chair in front of his desk. "I trust that your godson is going to be fine now?"

"He will." Harry sat down with a grateful little hiss, arching his neck and stretching out the tension in his shoulders. "Has there been any further word on the Dark Snake? I know that Auror Bailey was going to track him."

"Would you know anything about that tracking, I wonder?"

Harry innocently met Kingsley's eyes. It wasn't all that hard to do, once he had got past the war-inspired instincts that said Kingsley was part of the Order of the Phoenix and needed to know everything _right now_. He didn't, and some of the time, he would be just as happy not knowing it.

"I know a lot about tracking. Did you want me to give Auror Bailey lessons? I suppose I could do that, although—"

"Harry." Kingsley sighed out the word, and Harry obediently shut up. He resisted the urge to grin. Maybe it was the danger to Teddy being over, maybe it was the lack of sleep and food doing silly things to his brain, but he felt ridiculously good. In the meantime, he could deal with any Auror business that came up.

"As long as no one can find out what spell you used, then I think we're fine." Kingsley held his gaze, and Harry nodded. "Good. Now, Bailey did capture the Dark Snake, although he apparently had no children with him when he was caught. He's also resisting giving us the names of his associates. I'd like you to assist in the interrogation."

Harry nodded, less certainly. He wondered if he should get some more rest and food before he did that. Interrogations he conducted tended not to be top-notch unless _he _was absolutely top-notch and had control of his emotions. He still tended to explode over too many of the most mundane crimes.

"I want you there mainly as an intimidation factor," Kingsley continued, and then Harry got it. He flicked one finger against his forehead, where the scar still lay, a lot less significant to him now, but sometimes useful in other ways.

"Right. I'll go in and scowl like the desk flunky I am." Harry stood up and winked at Kingsley. "No field duty."

"I'll put you back on it as soon as the month is up," Kingsley promised, and Harry hid a grin. They probably had more cases than they could handle, with one of their best active Aurors only able to lead from the office.

"Fine," Harry said, and practiced his Auror-minion scowl. "Which room is the interrogation in?"

* * *

The minute Harry came in, the Dark Snake, who was in the middle of sneering something at Bailey, oriented on Harry and stared at him hard. "So you're the one who used the blood magic that found me," he said.

Harry was glad that no other Aurors except Bailey were in here right now. He took his time scanning the room for a bit, as though he had everything more important to do than answer the Dark Snake's question. It was the usual bare space with only the chairs and the table. At a pinch, of course, a desperate criminal could turn even those into a weapon, but it was much less dangerous when said criminal didn't have a wand.

"Are you _listening _to me, Harry Potter?"

"I wasn't, actually," said Harry, and turned back towards the Dark Snake. He hadn't heard the man's actual name yet, and he wasn't interested in it except as a means of taking away the aura of grandeur he'd tried to surround himself with. "Were you saying something?"

Bailey, reading his mind on at least one thing, tilted the folder he held so Harry could see the name along the top. _Marvin Gaylord._

Harry bit his cheek firmly and met Gaylord's eyes. He had stopped tapping his hand on the table and was focusing on Harry.

"I felt some of your weaknesses, when you were inside my head," he said. "Saw some of your mind."

"You would," said Harry pleasantly. "So you ought to know that someone who speaks Parseltongue naturally has no interest in bowing down to someone who only speaks it by poisoning himself with a potion."

"I had developed immunity to the poison, I was—" Gaylord stopped himself, but Bailey was writing busily. For a moment, Gaylord stared at Bailey's hands as though he hadn't expected him to be able to write, and then he whirled around and faced Harry. "I know why you were so affected by my work."

Harry said nothing, but contrived to lean against the wall and look bored. He was already helping the interrogation along more than he had thought he would.

"I felt your desire," Gaylord breathed. "Your desire to avail yourself of my services, if you could. You can't have children of your own, can you? You would give anything to have one of the children I was taking."

Harry didn't have the time to wonder how Gaylord had learned that, since he had probably done it from the strange connection the blood magic had formed between their minds anyway. He laughed.

Gaylord blinked hard. He looked as if he would have been glad to stand up and reach for his wand a short moment later, but that wasn't Harry's problem.

"You think that what you do could ever appeal to me?" Harry stalked towards the edge of the table as if he would round it and come for Gaylord. That didn't happen, of course, but the so-called Dark Snake leaned further back, and that was good. It meant that he was ignoring Bailey, and Bailey could take care of him from the side if he lost all control. "You steal children and take them to people who _pay _for them. And you're wrong about what I wanted. About everything I want."

He could see Gaylord's mind working frantically, trying to understand how he had misinterpreted the blood connection. Then he abruptly narrowed his eyes and said, "But you would want a child of your own blood if one was possible. What if I said that I could get that for you?"

_He can probably hear my heart beating. _It was pounding that hard, and Harry could feel the impulse to reach out and stroke his fingers down Gaylord's face right before he punched him in the jaw. He probably couldn't hide the flush on his neck, either.

"I would say that you're full of shit," Harry retorted smartly. If he couldn't control his physical reactions, he could still control his words. "Do you understand _anything _I'm saying? I wouldn't want to bargain with someone who spoke counterfeit Parseltongue, or someone who stole kids because he couldn't get his own. And I wouldn't want someone who would make up a blood connection with a potion, either."

"Counterfeit," said Gaylord, shaking his head.

He was trying to regain his composure. Harry saw no reason to let him. "That's right," he said, leaning forwards and catching Gaylord's eye when he thought he saw his attention start to twitch towards Bailey. "It is. Everything about you is fake. Tell me the truth. You used the Snake Tongue Potion because you couldn't stand not being a Dark wizard in all the particulars, right? You wanted to be a Parselmouth, but that has to be inborn, so you faked it."

Gaylord's hands trembled, then clenched. "I was speaking to snakes."

"Like this?" Harry asked, and pictured the Slytherin symbol in his mind, and hissed hard.

Gaylord's face split open for a second, and Harry saw the yearning under the surface. It made him want to roll his eyes. The "gift" he would have done anything to get rid of, other people treasured like it was a sign of special favor from Merlin.

But just then, Gaylord lunged at him, and Harry became a bit busy with defending himself.

The table was between them, but Gaylord took advantage of that, pushing it hard into Harry's legs. Harry had jumped back part of the way, but not enough to get himself completely out of the way, so he staggered. Gaylord hissed like one of the Parselmouths he wanted so badly to be, and shot out a hand as if he would grip Harry's collar and tug him flat that way.

"_Aranea_," Harry gasped, a modified version of the charm he had used to bind Malfoy in the alley behind the Ministry. He didn't have time for any more.

The air seemed to shudder weirdly around him, and Harry grimaced. _No food._ He got weak like that when he didn't eat enough.

But the web still worked, although Gaylord had twisted enough that it only snared one hand and tied it to the side of his neck. He gave a sound of outrage anyway, and tried to kick Harry in the groin beneath the table.

"Put Auror Potter down."

That was Bailey. Gaylord's ignoring him had worked out well, Harry thought as he cautiously straightened up and knocked Gaylord's weak, spasming fingers away from his collar. Bailey stood behind the table with his wand against Gaylord's neck, shaking his head disapprovingly.

"Sorry, sir," he told Harry. "I must have been asleep, to let him just jump on you like that."

"No harm done," Harry said, checking the lines of his robes. "At least for me," he added, because Gaylord's eyes were bulging and he still wanted to see if he could get a reaction out of him.

Gaylord snapped his teeth once, and then turned his head away as though Harry wasn't worth his time and attention. Harry smiled, a little grimly. Yes, of course Gaylord could react like that after they had already gained some insight into him. Harry only wished they could have gained more.

"Sir?"

Harry started and turned back to Bailey. "He hasn't confessed anything to you?"

"Nothing useful until you were here, sir." Bailey's eyes were bright with curiosity, and Harry knew that it was about him, and probably about Gaylord's statement that Harry couldn't have children. Well, Bailey would just have to hold onto his questions for a while.

"Then I'll remain a little longer," said Harry, and he did, but no matter how delicately he needled Gaylord, that really was the end of both their usefulness. Gaylord sat with his arms folded and stared at the table, and never altered his posture or his silence during the near-hour that Harry was there.

Bailey finally nodded and waved Harry towards the door. "I think you can go on now, sir. I agree, we're probably not going to get any more out of him."

Harry sighed and drew his cloak close to him, shivering as he walked towards the door. He could only be glad that Bailey was so intelligent, or at least determined to do the task in front of him first. He could think of a dozen other Aurors who would have asked questions by now.

"Potter."

Harry turned back to face Gaylord, not because he really wanted to, but because he knew as well as Bailey that they had to squeeze every drop of information out they could. And Gaylord was leaning forwards with his hands braced on the table in front of him, but not as if he was going to attack again. In fact, he ignored the way that Bailey brought his wand down on the back of his neck.

"You understand that you'll never have blood children?" Gaylord asked softly. "I was lying when I said that I could find a way to repair it. I felt the depth of the damage when I was in your head. It was a million-to-one chance that the spells struck you like that. It can't be cured because the problem should never have existed in the first place."

Bailey was almost vibrating with curiosity, but he kept his gaze and his wand on Gaylord, and Harry didn't think an earthquake would persuade him to take them off. At worst, Bailey would probably Stun Gaylord if the earthquake came and then drag him to safety underneath the table.

"I know that," said Harry. "It's one of the reasons that nothing would have persuaded me to take up your offer."

"That _broke _your life," said Gaylord, and now there was a faint hint of panic in his voice, as though he was watching Harry wrestle himself free of bonds that he had been told would hold any prisoner.

"It did," Harry agreed. "And then I learned to walk again. Good-bye, Gaylord."

He did rather enjoy shutting the door on the gaping jaws of his enemies, he thought as he slid out of the interrogation room.

* * *

"I hope you have a good explanation of where you've been."

In his father's compressed words, Draco could hear all sorts of compressed emotions. He nodded. "I'll talk to him about it."

"That is not what I asked you about."

"I have the explanation," Draco said. He was studying Lucius, the way that his father stood as if he was going to block Draco's pathway into the inner rooms of the house. Draco swallowed. He didn't have to admit how much that hurt. Just because it _did _hurt was no real reason to admit it. "Whether I can make it simple enough for a five-year-old's ears that he'll understand everything I want him to understand…"

He let it trail off, and a second later, Lucius seemed to realize that there wasn't going to be anymore. His mouth flattened out, and he gave the smallest of nods, then moved aside.

Draco didn't know whether it was his face or the fact of his coming here or the words he had spoken that made Lucius decide to give him the chance, but he was grateful that something had.

By the time he was inside the house, he was already trembling with impatience and fear. He swatted away the thoughts and continued down the corridors of the much smaller house his parents had chosen when they left the Manor to him. He hadn't been here often, but they were familiar nonetheless. Of course Lucius had mimicked the colors and the general layout of the Manor.

Draco heard Scorpius's laughter before he saw him.

He halted and peered around the corner before he came into the room. It was instinctive, just not wanting to step into such a fun scene as Scorpius was playing in and interrupt. Maybe it was stupid, but it was his decision.

His mother sat in a chair in a large, bright room that for once wasn't an imitation of an original at the Manor, her gaze resting on Scorpius as if he was the center of her universe. Draco reckoned he might be. Scorpius was tumbling around on the sunlight that covered the floor from the glass walls with—

Draco blinked. It was a Kneazle kitten. A little unusual in that it was white with a silver streak down the back, but if he had known that Scorpius wanted an unusual-looking pet, he could have got him one, without relying on his parents to provide it.

_If I had known. If anyone ever told me._

Draco touched his chest, above his heart. _If I had ever asked._

Scorpius scrambled up from laughing and started to say something to Narcissa, or maybe to the kitten. Draco found it hard to tell the direction his eyes were looking. That was another thing he had never bothered to pay much attention to when he was with his son.

But then Scorpius saw Draco, and he stilled, his eyes so wide and round that Draco thought he could see the sunlight through them. He walked into the room and bent over to kiss his mother. Scorpius hadn't run to him, which settled the question of whether he should kneel down and try to hug him. That meant Scorpius would come to him in his own time, Draco suspected.

"Did you have a good holiday?" Narcissa had her hand on Draco's shoulder, but her eyes were flickering back and forth between him and Scorpius, as though she had no idea where to begin reintroducing them to each other.

"I did," said Draco. "And I spent part of my time on a quest, searching for that goal I told you about."

"That you told me very little about," said Narcissa, but she was still keeping her voice low so as not to upset Scorpius. It was only from the flatness of her lips that Draco really knew what she felt.

"I've achieved what of it I'm going to achieve," Draco said, and then he turned around and smiled at Scorpius. "Hello, Scorpius. How are you?"

Scorpius had picked up the Kneazle kitten and was cradling it close, as though he assumed that Draco would march across the room and take it away from him. Draco hated to think that he might have been that kind of father, but as it was, he had no perspective on himself for the last few years.

The Kneazle kitten scratched Scorpius and jumped down from his arms, running over into the corner where a fluffy mouse lay. Scorpius didn't flinch or act as if he felt the sting of the scratch at all. He still hadn't taken his gaze from Draco.

"I'm sorry," Draco said.

Scorpius blinked, and more sunlight seemed to leak through his eyes.

"I know I wasn't the best dad," Draco said, and he got down on his knees, because he needed to do it, whether or not Scorpius ever responded. "I hope that you can—I hope that you can forgive me, and maybe understand someday." Those were words he also needed to say, even if Scorpius also didn't grasp them. "I'm sorry for going away and leaving you. Can you forgive me?"

Scorpius at least knew the word "forgive," because he had heard his parents use it to him and each other. But he still didn't move forwards. He stood there and stared at Draco, and Draco was filled with the wrenching certainty that he shouldn't have come, that Scorpius had been happy here with his grandparents and felt like he really belonged in the wizarding world, and this was where Draco should have left him.

Draco suppressed the impulse to get up and walk away, though. He and Scorpius were still father and son. He could make sure that Scorpius visited his grandparents more and had more fun and freedom from him, but he couldn't just give up his responsibility or make a decision based in one wild moment.

_If nothing else, the way I went after Potter should have taught me that. _

"Scorpius?" Draco whispered, and then had to leave the question to dangle there, on a chain, while Scorpius shuddered and looked for a second as if he might run away.

But in the end, he didn't. With all his muscles shuddering and trembling like a hunted deer's, Scorpius still came closer.

He didn't hug Draco. But he looked at him solemnly from a short distance away and whispered, "Why did you leave?"

"Because I was stupid." Even if Draco could never tell Scorpius all about Potter and Ethan Starfall and the complexities of what he had done, he could admit _that _much. "Because I wanted to chase someone down who wasn't worth being chased down. And then because I had to help your cousin. But I should still have come back here and seen you instead of running away."

"Cousin?" Scorpius blinked, and his face changed.

Draco was actually glad that he hadn't remembered the existence of Teddy Lupin until now, because it meant that he could tell Scorpius about something that might please him without actually trying to manipulate his way back into Scorpius's good graces. "Yes. Grandmother has a sister, your great-aunt Andromeda. And she has a grandson called Teddy Lupin. He's a few years older than you are."

Draco could see Scorpius wrestling painfully with that for a moment. It was a little complicated for a five-year-old, but then again, Scorpius had been expected to memorize Malfoy genealogy from the time he was small. He grasped it sooner than most other five-year-olds would have, Draco thought with pride.

"Why is he somewhere else?" It was probably the only way Scorpius could think of to ask why he'd never met Teddy.

"Because I didn't get along with his grandmother and him," Draco said. Again, a simple way to explain it. He would tell the truth, but he had been wrong to think that Scorpius could appreciate all the differences between Muggles and wizards and why it was important to be a Malfoy. That was something Draco would have to explain and make _fun _for him, not just assume that Scorpius would get.

Maybe that was part of the difference between the way his parents had raised him and the way he had raised Scorpius. His father had been cold at times, and distant, and sometimes impatient when Draco failed to grasp the point of a lesson, but Draco had admired him intensely and wanted to be like him. He couldn't wait until he grew up and people would respect him for being a Malfoy. But he hadn't been that kind of example for Scorpius.

"Can I meet him now?" Scorpius gave another look around, as though he thought Teddy would come out from behind a wall.

"You can meet him tomorrow," Draco promised recklessly, although Teddy might still be recovering and he didn't know if Andromeda would let him come over, and Potter might be there. "He's still a little sick, but he's getting better."

"Good," said Scorpius, and then he gave Draco a look of deep suspicion that was wounding, but once again, Draco understood it too well to resent it. "Are you going away again?"

"Not for a long, long time," Draco said, and put out a tentative hand. "I'm your dad, if you want me."

"What about Mum?"

"She won't come back all the time," said Draco. "Only for visits." _The truth, no matter how much it might make him resent you someday. Lies would just make him resent you more._

Scorpius subjected him to another stare, so thoughtful that Draco was a little surprised. But then he nodded and said, "Okay," and then his voice seemed to break and so did the light in his wide eyes. "I missed you, Daddy."

He crossed the last distance between him and Draco all at once, and Draco could do nothing except wrap his arms around Scorpius and close his eyes and think, _This is worth everything. It always was, if I'd had eyes to see it._


	19. Bend or Break

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Nineteen—Bend or Break_

"I want to go see Teddy," said Scorpius quietly, looking into his bowl of porridge.

Draco looked up at him from across the table. Scorpius shrank a little. Draco wondered if he was that intimidating, or if he just scowled at his son without realizing what he was doing. He made an attempt to look completely normal, and glanced down at his own plate and his spoonful of porridge again. "When do you want to do it? Today?"

There was utter silence from the other end of the table. Draco looked up again, wondering if Scorpius had just been teasing or testing him to see what he would say, and didn't really want to go.

But Scorpius's eyes were shining, instead. "You'd let me?" he whispered, barely parting his lips. "You'd let me?"

"Yes, I would," said Draco. _He thinks me a troll. No surprise. _He put down his spoon and sat up straighter when Scorpius went on looking at him in both delight and disbelief. "I mean it, Scorpius. You can tell me what time you'd like to go, and I'll at least ask your great-aunt." _So strange to think that he has one of those now. _"She might say that we have to wait until tomorrow, but I'll ask."

Scorpius looked perfectly content with that, maybe because he had to ask permission and was sometimes refused it, too. "Ask, Daddy. Please," he added suddenly, and ducked his head back towards his bowl, still watching Draco out of the corner of his eye.

"Yes, I will," Draco agreed. "Just as soon as breakfast is done with." Scorpius had woken up late this morning, and Draco had waited so they could share the meal. Andromeda was probably awake, and Draco was sure that Teddy would be.

_Perhaps Potter will be there as well._

Draco shook his head a little. That was a kind of comfort and treat for himself, if Potter was. He wouldn't let it prevent him from going to see his aunt and cousin even if Potter wasn't there.

_I have a cousin. _He thought that through, and realized it was something he liked for its own sake, even though he had mostly been thinking about it as something that would benefit Scorpius. Granted, Teddy was much closer to Scorpius in age than to Draco, but he was still a family member Draco could speak to, joke with, visit when he was lonely.

And that gave him another vantage to understand the yawning bitterness in the way Potter spoke to him. Maybe he knew that Teddy would like that connection, too. And he was jealous of Draco for having it. For encouraging it?

_Potter is jealous, yes._

Draco took a deep breath. He was still going to keep his word to Scorpius. He would come first from now on. Draco wouldn't pit his obsession with Potter against his love for his son. And he wouldn't place it first, either. He was going to do his level best not to indulge it at all.

But it still eased something old and deep and tight-wound inside him, to know that Potter was jealous of him for something.

* * *

"Auror Bailey tells me that your interrogation of the Dark Snake went in some unexpected directions."

Harry sighed and leaned back. Once again, he was in the chair across from Kingsley's desk. He absently wondered what the other Aurors thought of him being in here all the time. Ron knew the truth, but the others must be starting to gossip about Auror Potter and his propensity for getting in trouble.

"Yes, it did, sir," he said, and met Kingsley's gaze squarely. "He had acquired protected information about me that he used against me."

Kingsley spent a moment looking unseeing at the pile of documents in front of him. Harry had no idea what he was thinking. He resigned himself to at least another month of desk duty. On the other hand, maybe Kingsley would see that he was becoming a disaster here and send him back to field work.

When Kingsley looked up, Harry held his breath, but Kingsley said the most unexpected thing. "I am wondering if you should tell the public about the—problem of the Dark curses afflicting you, so that no one can use this information against you in the future."

"_No_."

Kingsley slid a hand under his desk. Harry knew he was reaching for his wand, and he didn't understand why until he realized he was on his feet and leaning across the desk. Kingsley would know what a trained Auror could do under circumstances like that.

With an effort as great as though he was manhandling himself, Harry sank back into his chair. "No, sir," he repeated quietly. "It wouldn't remove the weapon from the hands of my enemies. It would only make it greater. They would try to embarrass the Ministry, by insinuating that it doesn't protect its Aurors enough." That had happened the first few times he was injured. "Or they would send me Howlers for my divorce, for not adopting, for not being a real man. Anything they could think of. I don't want that out."

Only the revelation of Ethan Starfall's "existence" and the tangle he'd fallen into with Malfoy would be worse, in Harry's opinion. And that only because they would probably start calling him mad instead of simply pathetic.

"Perhaps you're right," Kingsley said, and his voice was so slow that Harry knew there was something else behind this.

"Sir?" Harry asked. He met Kingsley's eyes. He had done enough for the Auror Department to deserve the truth.

Kingsley stood and wandered slowly over to the far wall, where he stood a moment, gazing down on the enchanted view the windows showed him. From where he sat in the chair, Harry couldn't see what it was. He didn't much _care _what it was, either. He waited tensely for some kind of acknowledgement, and Kingsley finally turned around and gave him the bad news.

"The truth is that I've received questions since your last injury about how effective you are as an Auror," he said. "I'm sorry, Harry." He raised a hand, and Harry realized that his mouth had opened without his permission. "Let me continue."

Harry nodded and sat back. His heart was beating hard, fast. Not as fast as it had over Teddy's illness, but there wasn't much difference.

"Your frequent injuries are one factor," said Kingsley, and he sat down behind the desk and played restlessly with a pile of paper again. "Another is how many people recognize you. This makes it hard to use you in undercover work, and makes some criminals more prone to attack you, precisely because they want the glory of bringing you down."

"With all due respect, sir," Harry said, and his voice was full of ice that Kingsley flinched from, "that's been true from the first day that I entered field work as an Auror. If not true the minute I joined the training program. Why is it a problem _now_?"

Kingsley leaned forwards. Maybe Harry's bluntness had given him the permission to be blunt back. "Because your head's fucked up, Harry. It has been for the last three years. The injuries—pardon me, the absolute _parade _of injuries that you've accumulated—started then. And this reaction to Gaylord is another symptom. I'm not sure why it's been worse lately." He gave Harry a long, demanding stare.

Harry remained silent. Kingsley probably _did _have a good idea of what had occurred with Malfoy and the warlocks, if not why, but Harry didn't want to force him to acknowledge it officially. That was to make Kingsley's life easier as much as it was his.

Kingsley finally leaned back with a long, rattling sigh and stared at the ceiling. "It's a weapon against the Ministry and the Auror Corps in your enemies' hands, yes. But it's also a weapon against _you_. I'm afraid that you'll get yourself killed, Harry." He brought his gaze down slowly to Harry's face. "And I'm not entirely sure it'll be accidental."

"I don't have a bloody death wish," Harry snarled back, his temper catching on fire. It was something the papers had sometimes accused him of, although not in years, and Ron hinted at it more subtly when he told Harry that he wasn't taking care of himself. "I _promise _you I don't! I wouldn't go out into the field and put other people in danger if I did! I'd just lock myself up in my house and off myself!"

Kingsley lost what little color he had, and leaned forwards this time to lock eyes with Harry. "And I'm not supposed to be concerned about you, Harry, when I've just heard you announce that?" he whispered.

Harry clenched his hands and looked away. "It's not that I'm thinking about it on a daily basis," he said, muffled because of how hard he was biting his tongue. "Just that that's what I _would _do, if I was going to. Which I'm not."

"It's still a concern," said Kingsley. "If nothing else, I think we need to give you a chance to cool down for a few days. Whatever's riding you—Teddy's illness or the Dark Snake and what he's done, I don't know—go home and rest. Think about other things. I _will _send you home when I find out that you're in the Ministry."

"When?" Harry had to ask, wondering if that was some kind of challenge for him to try and sneak into the Ministry when Kingsley's back was turned.

"I know that you'll want to come back." Kingsley slammed a hand in the middle of the desk hard enough to make Harry jump. "You _can't _do this, Harry. I won't let you throw away everything that you've achieved up until this point because an interrogation went badly. Go home. Do you understand?"

"When can I return?" Harry rose slowly to his feet, trying to hide how badly his hands were shaking.

Kingsley paused and studied him, and his voice was a little kinder when he spoke again. "A week at the least. I'll firecall you then and we'll see what kind of mood you're in. Understood?"

"Understood," Harry finally whispered, and he left the office. His hands were still shaking. He Summoned what he needed from his office and waited until he was sure that he could step into an unoccupied lift.

He had counted on his job and Teddy and Rose and Hugo to get him through the stunning loss of Ethan. There went one pillar. And perhaps more, if Malfoy was going to be visiting Teddy all the time and Harry had to owl to make sure that it was okay for him to come over.

A second later, Harry snapped his spine straight and shook his head. No. He wasn't going to wait around for permission the way he had to do with his job. He was going over there, and if Malfoy was present, he would make every attempt to get along with him civilly, for Teddy's sake. But he wasn't going to be chased out of his godson's house because Malfoy had to ruin everything.

_He cost me Ethan. He can't cost me Teddy. He _can't.

* * *

"Is your name _really _Scorpius?"

Draco frowned at Teddy. He hadn't left the issue of Scorpius's name for more than a few minutes since they were introduced. Scorpius had been excited to meet his cousin, but he was becoming quieter and quieter, spending a lot of time staring at his hands. Draco knew the signs of his son being shy.

He rolled a single eye at Andromeda, who intervened. "How would you feel if someone made fun of your name, Teddy?"

Teddy shot her a startled look. "I'm not making fun!" he objected, and reached for a biscuit on the tray that was on the table and crunched through it. "I just think it's a strange name."

Scorpius threw Draco an anguished look, and Draco intervened before he thought about it. It was a long, long time since his son had appealed to him for help. "It's the name of a constellation. So is Andromeda. So is Draco. So are many other Black names. Like Sirius Black, your godfather's godfather. Mr. Potter told you about him, right?"

"_Oh_." Teddy nodded, and then focused on Andromeda. "Why didn't you name me after a constellation?"

"Because you're not primarily of Black blood," said Andromeda, sounding prim, but Draco could see how relieved she was to leave the idea of Scorpius being made fun of behind. "And your mother wanted to name you after your grandfather."

Teddy shrugged, as though to say that he would never understand why some people got the cool names and others didn't, and looked at Scorpius. "What's it like living in a big house? Malfoy Manor is big, right?"

"It's big," Scorpius said, but then stopped as if he couldn't drive the words out of his throat any longer. Draco caught his eye and smiled encouragingly.

Scorpius took a deep breath and started again. "It's so big that sometimes the house-elves miss a spot when they dust."

Teddy leaned in. "And what are the house-elves like? Does Aunt Hermione come around and complain about them to you, too?"

Scorpius looked startled, and Draco grimaced. He didn't really want to discuss Granger at this point. Introducing Potter into the conversation would be enough of a hurdle to get over.

"I don't have an Aunt Hermione," said Scorpius.

Teddy paused a second, and Draco held his breath. But then he waved his hand and said, "Oh, right, because she's from Uncle Harry's side of the family. Well. You must like to play with things. What are they?"

"I like playing with Muggle toys," Scorpius declared, after staring at Draco as if he thought that Draco would forbid him to speak. Draco just bit his lip and looked firmly at the wall. He didn't even know how many Muggle toys Scorpius had seen or touched, or how different they were from wizard toys. "And I like my Kneazle. His name's Spark. And I like my toy broom."

"I have a _real _broom," said Teddy, sitting up straight. "Wanna see it?"

Draco winced a little despite himself at the corrupted word, but from the way Scorpius's eyes were shining, he found nothing ridiculous about any of it. He glanced at Draco for permission again, and of course Draco had to nod. At least he and Andromeda were right nearby, and would hear any screams of pain or despair if their respective descendants fell off their brooms.

Then Teddy led Scorpius outside in a sprint, and Draco was free to turn to Andromeda and say, "You let a _nine-year-old _have a broom?"

"He's almost ten," Andromeda said with a primness that reminded Draco of his mother and the way she had looked at him over her cup when he went to collect Scorpius from his grandparents. Then she abruptly began to giggle. "You look appalled, nephew. I wish you could see your own opinion of an indulgence that I'm sure you had at an even younger age."

Draco shifted. He wanted to say that he had been _extremely _responsible and had deserved to have a broom even when he was Scorpius's age, but he knew the real difference were the elves assigned to watch over him in case he fell.

"All right," he said. "It startled me, that's all."

"Yes, we are almost strangers to each other, aren't we?" Andromeda turned to face him, arranging her skirts around her in a way that allowed Draco to separate her from his mother. Narcissa would have swirled the skirts around her at the same time she was settling them, to make a point. "And you have no idea what kind of person I am, really, or if I'm an appropriate associate for your son."

Draco hoped that his pulse wasn't as visible at his throat as it felt like. "I made the choice to bring Scorpius here. I would never have done that if I thought there was a real chance that you would hurt him."

"I didn't mean hurt him physically," said Andromeda, with an arch of her eyebrow that Draco thought delicately condemned the place his mind had gone. "I mean that I'm a Muggle-lover, and probably what you would call a blood traitor. And my son-in-law was a werewolf, and my daughter a Hufflepuff."

The last part was unexpected enough that Draco choked, and something that Andromeda could call laughter if she wanted came out a second later. "You think that I'm going to be upset about that."

"For some people, it would be the last straw. But I'm rather more concerned about the other things."

Draco met her eyes. "I've changed," he said, as calmly and confidently as he could. "And I have Potter to thank for that. He was the one who—who let me know about Teddy, and made me realize that I had family. I was obsessing over Scorpius and disagreeing with my parents, and I didn't feel a profound connection to anyone else in the world. I'd even shoved some of my friends away, and they're pretty patient people. It was hard to do. You—you've taught me there's another part of the world I was ignoring."

He found himself wanting to tell her about Potter's deception as Ethan Starfall and their exchanges. He thought she was the sort of person who would understand. On the other hand, as she had already declared, they didn't know each other that well, and that instinct of Draco's could be mistaken.

"That may be," said Andromeda in a polite little voice. "But you must have some insecurities about me, some questions to ask."

She turned her head before Draco could say anything, and frowned. "Someone just Apparated in—oh. Harry."

Draco's heartbeat quickened in response. He wondered what Potter would say, if he appeared. When he appeared. Staying outside with the boys was unlikely, at least for the duration of his visit.

He turned back from his thoughts and found that Andromeda had stood up and was slipping out the door. "Where are you going?" he asked, a little sharply. While he wanted to see Potter, too, he thought it would be a bit much if his own aunt preferred the company of an adopted family member to his own.

"I'll ask him not to disturb us," said Andromeda, and smiled over her shoulder at Draco. "I think we're at a delicate point in our conversation, and we need privacy. And he would disturb you if he came in here. I'm not ignorant of the past you had with each other."

She left, and Draco swirled the liquid left in his teacup and considered his own disappointment in not seeing Potter. He would get over it, of course. But it was greater than he had anticipated it would be. Perhaps Potter would insist on striding in, and then he and Draco could have it out.

But Andromeda came in a few minutes later, without Potter. Draco accepted his fate—there would be other chances—and turned to getting to know his aunt better.

* * *

Harry staggered back into his own house. He sagged against the mantel a second later and gasped for breath. It seemed that huge iron bands were locked in place around his ribs and chest, so he was having trouble breathing. He leaned his head back against the stone of the fireplace and wheezed.

_Another pillar, gone._

When he'd come up to Andromeda's house, he'd seen Teddy flying with some other child on his broom, and that was unusual enough that he paused to look, wondering if one of the Weasleys was visiting. Then he saw blond hair whipping in the wind, and heard unfamiliar laughter, and looked around with his heart knocking in his mouth.

Right. Of course Malfoy was here, and he had brought his son. Harry had waved, but Teddy didn't pay him any attention, so Harry had gone past and into the house, bracing himself miserably to encounter Malfoy.

Andromeda had met him, with a faint and determined smile that Harry had never seen before. It startled him so much that he paused with one foot in the air, and had to shake his head and bring it down before Andromeda could think he was ridiculous.

"Harry," she whispered to him, as though there was someone asleep in the room behind her. "I'm visiting with Draco now, getting to know him. I think—it's a delicate situation. It would be better if you came back later."

Harry felt as though she'd taken a whip and struck him across the face. He folded his arms around himself, but that only earned him a chiding look from Andromeda, who probably thought that every one of his reactions was rooted in his childish feud with "Draco." Harry did manage to say, "Well, I won't cause any trouble with him."

Andromeda shook her head. "I think that _anything _could cause trouble with him right now. He's jumpy, and Teddy said some things that upset Scorpius. I want him to see that his family can welcome him and he can find a sense of safety here." She gave him another slightly scolding look. "Your presence unbalances him."

Harry stood there, not knowing what to say, and Andromeda reached out and patted his shoulder. "I'll be happy to see you if you come back tomorrow, and I _know _Teddy will. But right now, this is a time for family."

It _was _the whip, this time, and coming from a completely unexpected direction. _Family. _What Harry had been comfortably counting on being with Andromeda and Teddy, and what she—

Didn't see him as.

Somehow, Harry kept in the gasp or gulp of pain that he would have let out otherwise. He nodded and said, "Tomorrow, then," and managed to turn around and walk out of the house under Andromeda's understanding smile.

He passed beneath Teddy and Scorpius, and risked a glance upwards. But Teddy was still fully engaged with Scorpius, and showed no sign of noticing when Harry walked out of the garden and shut the gate behind him.

Harry Apparated home, and got the key in the door, and got inside, and that was when the weakness, the clutching feeling, the lack of air, overwhelmed him.

He finally dropped to his knees and put his hands over his face. Thoughts tore through his head. Teddy had a cousin. Andromeda had a nephew. They'd been grateful for his help, and even the Weasleys', when they didn't have blood family. But now they did, and it was clear how much Andromeda valued it. Harry didn't think this was just her gratitude at Malfoy's rescue of Teddy talking.

Blood mattered more than—other connections. The only kind of connections Harry would ever have.

He knelt there long enough that he started feeling as though his breaths were sword thrusts through his chest, and then he stood up. He supposed he could go over to Ron and Hermione's, but not right away. Ron was still at work, and Hermione would probably have Rose and Hugo in the office with her.

They had jobs. They had lives. They had _children_.

Harry wrote a note that he had to rip up because his handwriting was illegible, and then wrote another one, explaining that he was unexpectedly off work and was going to take a long-delayed holiday. Then he went and began to fling things in a trunk until he felt half-packed.

And then he left his house and Apparated straight to Godric's Hollow.


	20. In Godric's Hollow

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Twenty—In Godric's Hollow_

Harry walked through the streets of Godric's Hollow towards his parents' graves. He felt as though he was perched on top of his own head, manipulating his body like an iron puppet. It was so hard to take a step.

He manipulated himself around the corners that he remembered, and past the broken house that he had lived in with them when he was a baby, and then over the crumbling wall, until he stood before the two graves. He sat down there, and only briefly paused to Disillusion himself so that someone walking by wouldn't wonder what he was doing there and invite themselves to join in.

His hands were shaking again.

"Hello, Mum," Harry said. His voice was brittle and dry. He cleared his throat, coughed, and managed to continue speaking. "Hello, Dad. I've come to visit."

He had no idea what to say after that, at least for long minutes, and he sat there and listened to the silence and wished there was a voice, any voice, to speak back to him. He violently regretted throwing away the Resurrection Stone. He had done it for what seemed good reasons at the time, but if he had known that his only family was ever going to be the dead, then he wouldn't have.

"All of you are dead," he whispered to the graves and the grass that stood off to the sides. "Sirius and Remus and Dumbledore." Then a thought made his laugh start rising up his throat, and he bit his lip, because he knew from recent experience that laughing through a Disillusionment Charm was a _great _way to alarm the Muggles. "I suppose I could track down Petunia and Dudley and ask them if they wanted to come visit the graves."

But he shook his head a second later. That was only ever going to be a sick fantasy. He and Dudley had sort of reconciled right before the Dursleys vanished, but Harry didn't think Dudley would ever feel comfortable here, standing in front of the grave of the aunt he'd never known. And there was no one else in the world who was related by blood to James anymore.

"I didn't think of that," he told James then. "Until just now, I mean. At least if Dudley has kids, there'll be another generation of Mum's bloodline alive in the world, but not yours." He put his hand on his father's gravestone. It was faintly warm to the touch. "Did you—I mean, would it have bothered you? To know there's going to be no more Potters?"

Harry thought about that moment in the Forbidden Forest when he'd been walking to what he thought was his doom. His father's shade had smiled at him. No, he decided. It would have been okay, if James was still alive and Harry had found out he couldn't have kids. His dad had been proud of him when he thought Harry was going to _die_. Either way meant no kids. Maybe he would have been sad because he'd known the Potter family in a way that Harry never would, and maybe the legacy meant something strong to him, but he wouldn't have rejected Harry for not being able to produce children of his own.

Not rejected him the way Andromeda had.

Harry shuddered then, and shook his head. It felt disloyal to Andromeda to be sitting here and thinking that, even if it was what he felt.

"It's not—I know that she didn't mean it that way," he told his parents, and reached out and placed his hand on his mother's stone under her name. "She just wanted to talk to Malfoy, and they're related, and she didn't want me mucking it up."

Then he was silent, thinking. Andromeda had a blood connection to Malfoy, and so did Teddy. He was only Teddy's godfather. Maybe he'd been stupid, thinking that the special place he had in their lives would endure forever.

"But Sirius was special to me, and he was _my _godfather."

Harry knew there wasn't _really _a special silent encouragement coming to him from the gravestones, but he liked to pretend there was. He leaned his hands on them and continued.

"Maybe Teddy doesn't need the same connection to me, because he has so many other relatives left alive. Maybe I would never have wanted to live with Sirius if the Dursleys had been nicer to me. Or if you had still been alive," he added, and then sighed. That was the most impossible of all impossible wishes. To turn back time and make sure that Halloween night never happened…

But he returned to himself, and reality, with a bump when he heard a noise behind him. He rose quickly to his feet and backed away from the graves. If someone else was here to say hello to his parents, then the last thing he wanted was to be caught.

It was a hunched-over Muggle, though, moving slowly through the graveyard and staring at the headstones like a tourist. Harry hissed under his breath in annoyance. He wanted them to go away. He knew that Godric's Hollow was a village that wizards and Muggles shared together, like Ottery St. Catchpole, but this was a bloody inconvenient time to be reminded of it.

Unexpectedly, the Muggle froze and looked around. Harry looked down, wondering if he had left a foot visible. Sometimes Disillusionment Charms happened that way when he was upset.

But instead, the Muggle peered at the flattened spot in the mud where Harry had been sitting and asked in a trembling voice, "Is anyone there?"

Harry blinked, then grinned. Maybe the hiss he'd made, maybe a sigh or a shift of robes, had alerted the man that something was out of the ordinary. And because he didn't immediately think of a wizard, he probably wasn't a Muggle who lived in Godric's Hollow and was at least a little immune to strange happenings. That meant Harry was within his rights to drive him away.

He focused on the image of a serpent and hissed out a greeting in Parseltongue. "_Hello, someone who shouldn't have wandered here._"

Before he even finished the sentence, the Muggle was running, banging his knees into several stones on the way out. Harry watched as he practically vaulted the crumbling wall, and held in his laughter until he was sure it wouldn't be heard. Laughter wasn't a sound snakes made, and he didn't want the Muggle concluding it was a prank and coming back to catch the perpetrator.

Harry sank down in front of his parents' graves again when he was sure that the Muggle was gone, and stared at their names again. His mood had picked up a little during the prank, but it was already sinking, and he wasn't sure how to get it back.

"I just don't understand," he whispered. "I try to be—I don't know, good at my job. A good person. A good godfather. And it seems like all these things happen to me anyway. Voldemort wasn't enough for one lifetime?"

He leaned his head on his arms and sat there for a while. He no longer felt the intense despair that had driven him here, desperate to connect with the only people he had left (for certain definitions of "left") who would understand what family meant to him. And they would consider themselves his family. Harry was certain of that. He'd only been a baby when they died, but he would never have got kicked out of the house or disappointed them. Even once they found out he was a Parselmouth. Even if he did accept the Sorting Hat's invitation into Slytherin his first year at Hogwarts.

But there was no one else. Ron and Hermione would comfort him, invite him into their home, let him play with their children, but they couldn't give Harry that comfortable solidity that only belonging to a family could. The Weasleys all maneuvered around each other and felt the ache of Fred's grief in a way that Harry just _couldn't. _And they accepted Hermione as one of them in a way they couldn't accept Harry, now that he was no longer married to Ginny.

He really was alone.

_It can't be like that. It doesn't deserve to be like that, _Harry told himself fiercely, a minute later. _Surely it's not like that. That Dark hex destroyed my chance to have children. It doesn't mean that I have to spend the rest of my life alone._

Maybe in the Muggle world, he decided a second later, that would have been true. But not here, in the wizarding world, where lots of people married young despite their long lives. Harry had wondered why that was true, why Ginny had wanted to get married so soon instead of traveling around and playing years of Quidditch, but now he thought he knew. Seeing the world was fine if you had no attachments. But most wizards and witches wanted to stay within the embrace of their family, and you married young so you had more people to be with.

It made intuitive sense to Harry, even though he had waited to marry Ginny until he'd completed his Auror training. He wanted children, he wanted a home, he wanted someone to share it with. That was all he'd ever wanted. For all the horrible things about the Dursleys, he had envied them that.

Harry rubbed quickly at his eyes. The longer that he stayed here, the worse it got, the hollow feeling building inside him that said he might as well not continue living. No. He wanted to continue living.

He just didn't know how, or where, or with whom.

He rose to his feet and stared at the gravestones, still feeling numb. Like it wasn't fair. Like the only two people he would ever belong with were gone, and there was nothing he could do to bring them back.

_This is the sort of time when it would have been easier to be a Dark wizard, _Harry thought, a little resentfully. _Then I could delve into necromancy or something and at least have the hope of talking to my parents again. _He believed Dumbledore when he said there was no magic to bring back the dead, unless you wanted to make someone into a living Horcrux, but he knew necromancy would at least let him hear his parents' voices.

But he wouldn't do that. It wasn't the way he was made. The same way he wouldn't go out and marry some random witch, and never tell her that he couldn't have children. The same way he wouldn't adopt a wizarding child as his own when he would never be able to give them a normal life, because he was alone and because he was the famous Harry Potter.

It just...there were things he could do and things he couldn't. Changing his situation was one of them. It was too bad that it fit in the latter category.

_And how long will you be content to let things go on like that, with one mindless sorrow after another? How long will you be content to be alone?_

Harry snorted bitterly. Well, that was another thing. He didn't have to be single, either. Enough people had offered in the years since he got divorced, and he thought only about three-quarters of them were doing it because he was famous. There were some fellow Aurors who just liked him, he thought, and they wanted to make a go of it with him.

But Harry couldn't imagine making a family with someone else. It had been Ginny, it had always been Ginny, and without her, his hopes were just a few more of the things around here that were dead.

_You are getting maudlin in your old age, aren't you?_

Harry snorted again and closed his eyes. His old age. His lonely age. At this point, it looked like they were pretty much going to be the same thing.

He couldn't stay in front of his parents' graves forever, much as it would have comforted him. He heavily rubbed the dirt and dust from his robes, looking again at his parents' names, and their dates. He'd already lived longer than they had, he realized with a kind of queer shock. It was something he had never thought about consciously before.

"I suppose that's the way it is," he whispered. "I live longer than you and I'm twice as lonely as you were." He could imagine his parents being afraid when Voldemort was hunting them, and maybe resenting that other people got to live normal lives while they were driven into hiding for fear of a prophecy, but he couldn't imagine them as lonely. They'd had their family.

_Sometimes I wish I'd died with you._

He didn't say that aloud, but he did turn his back and make his way to the house where they'd hidden and he'd received the scar with much heavier steps than he usually would have used.

* * *

Harry made a little camp outside the ruined house, raising a tent of clothes he Transfigured and starting a fire going in a small hearth. One of the more useful parts of his Auror training had taught him to make such things when he might be camping outside for long periods of time. He sat there and drank the mulled wine he'd made and stared into the fire.

Kingsley didn't want him back in the Ministry this week. Andromeda and Teddy didn't need him, period, now that they had family. So what was he going to do for the seven days until he could go back to work?

Harry turned around and looked attentively at the house, staring up at the broken walls and the rubble still scattered on the ground. He supposed some people wouldn't feel right about him repairing the house. After all, since it had been left this way on purpose, as the sign in front of it said, then they might not want him tearing down a monument.

But if he made little repairs one at a time, and still kept it a monument to his parents instead of living in it, that might be all right. And it would give him something to do, and end the crushing hopelessness that felt as though a demon was sitting on top of his heart.

Harry stood up and made his way slowly towards the side of the house, resting one hand on the stone wall. He could feel nothing except the cool dampness of the evening. No magic, no sign that this had once been the place where he had lived with his family.

Well. He could change that soon enough, Harry thought, and began to levitate pieces of stone off to the side.

* * *

Draco woke up slowly, blinking. He had taken a nap with Scorpius for once, curled up on his bed with him, and it felt odd to wake and not know, for a second, what had really woken him up. He turned his head lazily to the side, surveying the room and wondering if one of the house-elves had popped in to clean and then popped out again when he saw them there. Scorpius was still more than fast asleep, curled up in the crook of Draco's arm with a small line of drool sliding down his chin.

Then Draco heard the distant chime, and sighed. It was the Floo. Someone was trying to contact him in the library, it sounded like. That meant it was probably his parents, wanting to know the next time Scorpius could visit them. That Floo was reserved for members of his blood family only.

Draco gently disentangled himself from Scorpius and made his way downstairs, casting a few Freshening Charms on his hair and face as he went. He was trying to repair his relationship with his parents the way he was trying to do it with his son and aunt, but he knew the caustic remarks he would attract if he appeared in front of them looking half-asleep.

The face that appeared in the Floo was Andromeda's, however, not his mother's or father's. Draco blinked, feeling his heart quicken for a second. Then he shook his head. It was probably just a matter of a lost toy that Scorpius had borrowed from Teddy without permission or something.

"Good afternoon, Aunt Andromeda," he said. "Was there something you needed?"

Andromeda's face hovered in the flames for the longest time, staring at him. Draco felt his chin tilt up defensively and a few of his inner barriers rise. Perhaps she didn't want them to come back to her house. Perhaps he had offended her. Well, he still wanted the children to have the chance to play together, and he would fight her on that, instead of accepting it passively, the way he once would have.

Andromeda finally sighed and asked him the strangest question. "Have you seen Harry?"

"Potter?" Draco asked blankly. Seeing the quick flicker of her eyes, which he knew was scornful, he immediately said, "Of course not. He's much more likely to visit a dragon's lair than to visit Malfoy Manor, unless on assignment."

"He was supposed to come back and see me today, and I haven't heard from him," said Andromeda, frowning more heavily than ever. "I wondered if he had contacted you and said something about not coming over in case you were here."

Draco snorted. "You're still more likely to hear from him than I am."

"What happened between the two of you?"

Draco flushed. The story he had once told his father as though it was the end of the universe sounded so childish to him now. "I wanted to shake his hand on the Hogwarts Express when we were both kids, he wouldn't, I insulted Weasley and him, we became eternal rivals and then rivals at Quidditch, we were on opposite sides of the war, end of story."

"I didn't mean that." Andromeda folded her arms. "You may think I'm blind or too concerned with Teddy to notice, but I have eyes. The way you greeted each other when you came to give your blood for the potion was too touchy to be from that old a wound. Something happened between you more recently. What was it?"

"I think Potter has to be the one to tell you that. It concerns his secret." Draco spoke with as much restraint as he could, given what he was still thinking about Ethan Starfall. "Maybe he's on a mission for the Aurors or something. I'm sure he'll be back soon."

"I've spoken with his superior, Kingsley Shacklebolt. He told Harry to take the week off because he's been reckless lately and Shacklebolt thinks he needs some time away from his job." The pinched skin around Andromeda's eyes was familiar to Draco from his mother's face, and the mirror. "I'm worried about him."

Draco shook his head. "I still don't know what you want me to do. I haven't seen him. I promise, I would tell you if I had."

"Just like you're telling me the source of the recent tension between the two of you?" Andromeda leaned forwards as if she would pounce on him.

Draco shrugged, uncomfortable. "The only reason I'm keeping mum on that is because Potter asked me to, and it really does involve secrets that are his." He suspected that Andromeda likely knew about Potter's infertility and Potter wouldn't care if Draco discussed that with her, but Draco thought he was the only one who knew about Ethan Starfall.

It was strange, to be in such unique possession of one of Potter's secrets and not want to use it to humiliate him. Draco would have valued the power it gave him over Potter, once. Now he was only aware of how much he had to skirt around other people because of it.

"Draco. Please. Harry doesn't…deal well with being isolated from his job or people he loves. I'm worried about what he might do. If this secret concerns anything important to him, please tell me."

Draco hesitated for a long moment. He wondered for a second if she was right, if Potter would harm himself, maybe kill himself, if he thought the rest of the people in his life had turned their backs.

But they _hadn't, _and as far as Draco could tell, Potter hadn't revealed the secret of Starfall to anyone else. No, in fact, Draco was sure he hadn't, even without Potter's word on the matter. For one thing, most people would have spread the news of the Savior's coping tactic around, just like they would have the news of his infertility. And his friends would have got him into therapy or something. And Andromeda would probably not be asking him these questions.

Draco was Andromeda's nephew, and that tempted him to yield. So did the thought of what he would be feeling if Scorpius was the one who had disappeared. It was the closest he could come to conceptualizing Andromeda's relationship to Potter.

But he was also sort of a bastard, and if he was being honest with himself, he wasn't ready to surrender the pleasure that came from knowing one of Potter's secrets. Not to mention that he had a strong self-preservation instinct, and he wasn't sure that he could survive the spells Potter would unleash at him if Draco told anyone else about Starfall.

"I can't tell you," he said, and when Andromeda's face went grey and she opened her mouth, he held up a hand. "But I can look for him. You think that he's feeling abandoned by everyone right now?" Something finally occurred to him. "Why would you think that? Only asking him to come back the next day isn't unreasonable."

Andromeda looked aside, and there was a flush on her cheeks now that looked uncomfortably like guilt. Draco waited, and Andromeda finally murmured, "I told him that he had to come back because I was talking with you, and it was a time for family."

Draco just stared. It was probably because he'd known Potter's secrets, both of them, although one longer than the other, but the words struck him in a way that they couldn't have before.

Andromeda, though, knew at least one secret, and she was perfectly capable of guarding her words, and even making Teddy guard his, if he had something to do with it. Draco spoke before he could stop himself. "You said _that _to him, when you know that he—lost his parents?" Safest to stick to public knowledge right now.

Andromeda flashed him a dark, humiliated glance. "I didn't think he would take it that way! Harry should know by now that I love him in a way that doesn't have anything to do with blood connections, that family can mean more than that."

Draco snorted. He couldn't help himself. "Perhaps he should have known it, but you spoke as if blood connection was the only thing that mattered, didn't you?"

Andromeda drew herself up. "I know that blood is the only thing that matters to _you_," she said, voice trembling. "I should have realized that you would mock me for even trying to include Harry in my family."

Draco held up a hand, while his mind worked rapidly. Potter wanted family. He would go find something that reminded him of his parents. Draco had used James and Lily Potter as a conversational gambit just now, but that didn't reduce their importance to Potter in this context.

What likelier place than the place where his last memories of them must linger, the place where they had died?

"I think I know where he is," he said, but shook his head sharply when Andromeda opened her mouth with what looked like joy on her tongue. "I'll be the one to go and fetch him."

"What? Why you?"

"Because right now," Draco said, "I think I have the dubious honor of being the person in this room who's hurt him the least."

_And, _he added to himself as he closed the Floo connection on Andromeda's stricken face, _away from prying eyes, it's not going to matter what he might say or if he duels me. And I think we both need to have our say out._


	21. Confrontation in the Ruins

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Twenty-One-Confrontation in the Ruins_

Harry stepped back and surveyed the side of the house, nodding a little. Yes, he didn't think anyone could be too upset with the level of work he had done so far. He had added a window shutter, repaired the most tumble-down wall, and swept out most of the branches and twigs that had accumulated inside. No one would really notice, at least if they weren't looking for it.

Harry stretched a little. His muscles ached in a way he hadn't known they could ache. Now maybe he could go back to his little fire and sleep in the consciousness of a job well-done.

He had just turned to go back to the camp when he spun around again. He had recognized the crack of Apparition, and while it was probably someone coming to see the monument, he couldn't discard the notion that it was one of his friends.

If that was the case, Harry did _not _want to be seen. The note he'd left would have to reassure them.

Harry faded back against the wall and cast a Disillusionment Charm on himself. That ought to be enough to avoid a casual seeker. If it was someone who wasn't casual, well, he would deal with that when he saw he had to.

Footsteps approached him. At one point the walker stopped, and Harry smiled a little, grimly. They were examining his camp. He wondered if this was a trained Auror. Of course, that meant it could be Ron. Or maybe Hermione, whose curiosity would lead her to examine everything.

"I know that you're here somewhere, Potter. Mind revealing yourself? Andromeda is getting nervous."

All of Harry's good resolutions blew away in the face of that voice. It was so mocking, so _taunting, _and it reached down and pierced something inside him that had been waiting, storing up his anger and dismay. Now he turned and stomped towards the speaker, removing the Disillusionment Charm.

Sure enough, he came around the corner and saw Malfoy standing there in the trampled mud and leaf mold, examining Harry's awning and hearth as though they were a mass of crawling insects. Then Malfoy turned his head, probably at a shimmer of motion out of the corner of his eye.

Harry didn't waste time. He stuck. Hard.

Malfoy went flying from the modified Blasting Curse that hit him, a modification Harry had come up with when he wanted a convenient way to toss enemies into walls without killing them. Harry followed him up, smiling nastily. He could feel his heart pounding in a way that he normally only associated with the height of battle. Well, maybe he could get some of the demons out of his soul by fighting Malfoy. Amazing that he hadn't thought of that before. It had been one of his favorite diversions during Hogwarts.

He struck again, but this time Malfoy either saw or felt it coming and set up a Shield Charm in front of him. Harry sneered at how pathetic it was. Malfoy should have been brushing up on his defensive magic in the last few years, instead of huddling in his house and obsessing over his son.

"You have a lot of nerve, talking about Andromeda," Harry said calmly, and began walking off to the side, where Malfoy's Shield Charm looked the weakest. "You're the one she chose, the one that she said was _family. _You ought to be worshipping at her feet for being willing to recognize you after all the years that you spent despising her."

"Potter, you idiot, she didn't mean that the way it sounded." Malfoy rolled up on one arm and stared at him through the shimmer of the shield. "She only meant that she wanted to talk to me alone _at the moment. _She firecalled me today because she was expecting you to come over and she was worried when you didn't."

Harry shook his head, rejecting that information, as he had to reject it. If Andromeda had been serious about expecting him, she would have firecalled his friends first.

Malfoy seemed to follow the internal line of his reasoning and anticipate it, in a way Harry wasn't used to and didn't like. "She did contact everyone else first. Including your boss, who told her that you were on holiday for right now. But she thought maybe I'd seen you. She suspects something more than the tension from when we were children is between us. Because of how she saw us act when we were with Teddy," he added hastily.

Harry had raised his wand without knowing he'd done it. He lowered it again, shaking with the force of the magic he'd called back. "You're _not _to tell her about Ethan."

"Fine." Malfoy's eyes were a little blank. "Are you going to let me up and let me dismiss the shield now? We need to talk."

"We don't bloody need to do_ anything_," Harry said, and redirected the magic energy he'd been planning to use as the Lightning Chain Curse, when he'd thought Malfoy might have revealed Ethan Starfall to Andromeda, to raise a different kind of shield in front of him.

The Repulsion Shelter manifested as a circular brick wall, surrounding Harry and hovering a little above the ground, moving with him when he moved. Harry smiled. It would block Malfoy by body-slamming him a short distance away if he tried to get too close, and it prevented Harry from seeing or even hearing the voice of any other human being while he had it on him. Aurors were always being told it was a dangerous spell, thanks to their inability to connect with their comrades while they wore it, but Harry had excellent reason to use it right now.

So protected, he went back into his shelter and sat down to cook a simple meal over the fire. He carried some rations of dried bread and cheese with him at all times, the way most of the Aurors did. They would taste fine toasted.

* * *

Draco stared for a moment at the Repulsion Shelter. He'd heard of the spell and even been taught a way to counter it, but he didn't remember ever seeing it cast.

Potter _really _didn't want to talk to him.

_Well, too bad, _Draco thought, and cast the Spreading Decay Curse on the floating brick wall in front of him. It would take a while, but it would get through.

Draco glanced around again as the curse spread green, musty leaves through the brick. It looked as though Potter was trying his hand at repairing his parents' house. Draco wasn't sure why, but he supposed it might be the desire to bring new life and new buildings out of loss.

He shook his head. A short time ago, he wouldn't have recognized that impulse.

_But now I know it because of Scorpius. And I want to tie up the loose ends that are still dangling. Potter's one of those. If I can just make it so that I don't feel like I owe him something, or these secrets of his aren't bothering me-_

There was a thunderclap, and Draco whipped around and automatically raised a defensive shield again. Potter, with his Auror training, might despise what Draco could do, but Draco had some instincts that had been honed keen by the war, and which he could still use.

His curse had torn the brick wall of the Repulsion Shelter apart, he saw. The bricks were lying all over the ground, half-reduced to dust and half broken chunks. That was the good news.

The bad news was that he had an angry Harry Potter coming for him now, with black showing between his teeth but no color at all around his eyes.

Draco vaulted out of the way of the first direct strike, his shield moving with him, and then had to perform a complicated tap dance while lightning bolts and chains of fire and whirling blue spirals he had never seen before hammered at him. It was probably only thanks to his Aunt Bellatrix's training that he was surviving at all.

And he would never, _never _say that to Potter.

"_Just leave me alone!_" Potter screamed hysterically as he tried to corner Draco against the house for the third time, and Draco leaped again out of the way and clung to the side of the wall itself with a charm that made his hands and feet sticky like a spider's.

"When you firecall your friends!" Draco called. He had decided that he wasn't going to get to talk to Potter the way he wanted today after all. He had to calm down first. "And Andromeda. She's getting worried."

"They _don't need me_," said Potter, and he just stopped dead in the middle of the huge mud puddle his magic had already created around him. Draco watched him cautiously, knowing it had to be a trick, but not really understanding how. "They have their own families, their own children. If I hadn't told Andromeda I would come over the next day, she wouldn't have missed me."

Draco had no idea what to say to that. He reached into his head and groped around until he managed to find the words that fit. "But you were always close to your friends. You didn't need blood family to belong..."

"I thought I didn't," said Potter, and there was a peculiarity in his voice that Draco didn't have the time to analyze before Potter's wand snapped up and pointed at him again. "And _you _are really irritating me right now, Malfoy, so don't push it."

That was the kind of challenge that Draco never had been able to pass up. He arched his eyebrows and smiled. "Or you'll do what?"

Potter gestured. The wand movement wasn't one Draco knew, but it obviously worked, because the wall he was clinging to exploded, stones leaping out and hitting him on the head and arms and chest, forcing him to the ground.

Draco rolled over, groaning. He wanted to raise a hand to touch his head and find out if he had a concussion, but he wasn't sure that he knew where his hands were right now.

Potter walked towards him and stopped right in front of him, his feet filling Draco's astonished gaze. Draco weakly tilted his head back and met Potter's eyes. Potter knelt down in front of him and planted his wand in the center of Draco's forehead.

"Boom," Potter whispered. "If you were a Dark wizard I was hunting, you would lose."

Draco shivered and said the first thing that came into his head. Yes, he was probably concussed. "But it's not a hunt, and I haven't lost."

Slowly, Potter's smile, what little of it there had been, fell away from his face. "No," he said, and his voice was as deep as bitterness. "Not when you have a son, and I'll never have that." He stood up and made a flipping motion at Draco. Draco tensed for the earth beneath him to reject him as well, but it seemed that Potter just wanted him to go away. "So you've won. Go home and enjoy your victory."

Potter turned as Draco sat up, one hand still pressed to his aching head. He seemed utterly intent on ignoring Draco's existence. But Draco wasn't going to have that, not when he had spent time and even blood coming after Potter.

"This isn't the end of your life," Draco called after him. "Unless you really are going to commit suicide. What are you going to _do_? Just stay in Godric's Hollow for the rest of your days and spend your time camping out like you don't deserve a bed or a warm place to sleep?"

"You know nothing about how good I am with Warming Charms, Malfoy," Potter said, in a musing voice that made Draco wince. "And why shouldn't I? My boss and Andromeda have made it _very _clear that I'm not indispensable to them."

"Andromeda wants you to visit," Draco said, shaking his head. He had thought some of his Slytherin friends were stubborn about seeing the truth of the Dark Lord after his fall—they had clung for years to the notion that it was only the Dark Lord's timing that was wrong, not his methods—but they couldn't be as stubborn as Gryffindors. "I told you that already. She told you the day she sent you away. Why do you still believe otherwise?"

"She may want me there right now," Potter said calmly. "But soon enough, it'll be otherwise. She'll invite you and me over separately, and I won't be able to go over whenever I feel like it, which has been the way it's gone so far."

Draco rolled his eyes. _Merlin save me from Gryffindors determined to martyr themselves. _"I don't know what I can say to make you see the light."

"You can't. Go home, Draco." Draco jolted, and he had the feeling Potter had meant him to, because otherwise why would he have spoken Draco's first name? "There's nothing you can do here. You have a son to raise."

"A son that you would have helped me raise, if you'd gone on speaking in the guise of Ethan? If I hadn't wanted to know who you were?"

Potter paused. He obviously didn't know what to make of the turn the conversation had taken. For that matter, neither did Draco. He was accustomed to being several moves ahead in most conversations, now that he had so many of the same ones with his parents and friends.

Now he had to wait, his heart beating in his throat, and Potter's silence thickening around him until it felt hard to move.

* * *

_Fuck. I'm not having this talk with Malfoy, of all people._

Harry turned his head to the side. It was only obligation to Scorpius, and the thought of possibly having another child to help raise and no Ethan Starfall to abandon and Malfoy at Teddy's house without coming between them, that made him answer at all. "Yes. I would have gone on being him, and you would have gone on having a source of advice you said you needed. But you had to be greedy and paranoid, and ruin it all."

"Ethan and his children weren't real."

"No," Harry said slowly, to make sure that Malfoy understood the weight of each word. "Bloody. Shit."

"But you are," said Malfoy, and he must have a suicide wish, to stand there and look Harry in the eye as though he really had the right, as though he had more rights than Harry wanted to grant him. "You can still help raise Teddy, and your friends' children, I suppose." He made it clear from his tone that he had less than no interest in Rose and Hugo. Harry was about to erupt over that when Malfoy went on, his tone creeping, flinching. "And maybe, maybe I would still need a source of good advice about Scorpius, sometimes."

Harry stared in a way that ought to have made Malfoy crumple if he wasn't serious, although who really knew with Malfoy. But Malfoy stood there and blinked silently back at Harry, as if he had no idea why anyone wouldn't want his company.

"That can't happen," said Harry. "He still wouldn't be my blood son." His voice shook. He bit his lip until it felt as if it would be deformed and then spoke again in a calmer tone. "Besides, you've made it clear that you don't want me near him."

"How have I made that clear?" Malfoy's eyebrows rose. He had altered again, to someone who looked like he was more in control of the situation, and Harry _hated _it. "I brought him with me to Andromeda's house to meet Teddy, yes, but I was also hoping that you would be there."

"You make no _sense_," Harry told him roughly.

"It's Andromeda who has no faith in our ability to get along, not me." Malfoy gave him a smile like quicksilver, and attempted to lounge against the wall behind him. He did trip over a broken chunk of stone, though, and Harry snickered as he watched him right himself. Malfoy apparently didn't deign to notice that. "And what does the lack of blood relationship to Scorpius matter? Do you intend to give up visiting Teddy now that he has us?"

"You wish," Harry snapped, even though some twisted notion of doing exactly that had been in his head while he worked on the house.

Malfoy nodded intently. "So. I know that Scorpius doesn't have the connection of being your godson, but until recently, he didn't have the consolation of relatives on his grandmother's side, either. Connections only matter if you choose to acknowledge them."

Harry shook his head until he was dizzy, and sat down on the ground. He did keep his wand aimed at Malfoy, though, so if he thought he could come over and take advantage of Harry's dazed state, he would find a trap waiting for him. "But blood connections matter more than that. Andromeda said so."

Malfoy sighed and rolled his eyes. "I wish I'd been there when Andromeda said whatever she said that made you get into such a tizzy. I would have liked to stop it."

"This is a time for family," Harry quoted instantly. He was never going to forget it.

Malfoy nodded. "An unfortunate choice of words. But like I said, she would never have firecalled me if she wasn't worried about you. I was a desperation measure." He straightened his back. "And she tried to pressure me to reveal your secrets. She can sense the presence of Ethan hanging over our conversations, I think, even though she has no idea what he actually means. But I refused to."

"What do you want, a bloody medal?" Harry turned around to snarl at him. "Since _you _were the reason I lost Ethan in the first place."

"Ethan _wasn't real._"

"_I know that!_" Harry roared in return, and took a step towards Malfoy. His emotions were leaping and fountaining. One minute he wanted to collapse to the ground, the next he wanted to attack. He had reason to believe Malfoy could see that, and he just wouldn't give up and wouldn't run away and wouldn't stop talking. "But he was the way I coped! I could have gone on coping and given good advice to _everybody_ if you hadn't decided to distrust him for _no reason_."

"But I did distrust him, and he's gone." Malfoy's eyes were pale, but not his face. "Besides, he was your way of coping with what?"

"Not being able to have children," Harry said, and he made a crude gesture at his groin, and if Malfoy wanted to complain about that it was just too bad. "Being able to live in a world where everyone else who wants to can have kids, and family is the only thing that matters, and I can't be part of that."

Grief choked him, and he turned away. Malfoy was silent behind him. Harry added over his shoulder, "You should know that already. I told you already. Why ask these questions?"

"Did you talk to anyone? Healers, Mind-Healers, anyone?"

"Yes, of course I did." Harry dragged his hand through his hair and grasped his wand, then seized it hard against his knee. He didn't want to curse Malfoy out of just frustration. If he was going to do it, then he would choose a painful curse and Malfoy would bloody well know why. "The Healers confirmed there was nothing they could do. The combination of Dark hexes and the impossibility of tracing them back—"

"I didn't mean that. Did you talk to them about any way to cope with the grief? Any way of healing it, or pulling out your memories and changing them? That's a treatment for some traumatic memories, sometimes."

Harry stared at him. "What? Of course not. What Mind-Healer could I possibly trust to keep quiet about this instead of selling the story to the papers?"

"You seem to have trusted the Healers with the truth of your infertility in the first place, and they kept quiet." Malfoy put on a sneer that Harry felt was artificial somehow, although he didn't know where the realization came from. "And believe me, I heard no rumors about it, and I would have. I'm surrounded by the sort of people who still think I'm obsessed with you."

Harry shrugged. He didn't know why it was different, just that it was. He tried to voice a sense of the difference when Malfoy went on staring at him and wasn't satisfied, though. "I just—the Healers know how to treat physical causes. But going and telling the Mind-Healers about the fights I had with Ginny and Ethan and so on…I couldn't do that. It would make me look weak."

"Mind-Healers will take oaths to keep their patients' secrets, too. Or can be bound by oaths."

Harry stared a little. "Do you know any Mind-Healers who would willingly swear an oath not to talk about something they could see in my head? Because I don't."

"That's when you offer them a lot of money," Malfoy said with a faint sigh. "More money than they would earn by going to the papers. Or you trick them into an oath. Or you find someone who will bind someone else for a favor."

"I didn't want to talk to someone badly enough to do that to them," said Harry stiffly. Bribery and forcing oaths out of people had never occurred to him. He just knew that he couldn't trust a Mind-Healer, and he'd let it go at that.

"Besides," Malfoy went on relentlessly, "I think you're overestimating the attractiveness of this story to the general Mind-Healer public. You could find someone who would be bound by the oaths already sworn, and would accept a large amount of money for the work instead of bribery. But you didn't look, did you? You just assumed that no one would be willing to treat you, and you let it go and focused on Ethan Starfall and your imaginary life instead."

Harry looked blindly at Malfoy across the ruins. He hated Malfoy, suddenly, for the way he was standing here and preaching at Harry. Malfoy was the reason Harry had lost Ethan in the first place. He was the reason he had lost Andromeda and Teddy. And he was the reason for the faint, painful hope Harry could feel blooming in his heart, the hope that he didn't want to bloom there, because it would mean that he had to do something about it.

"Get out," he said, with quiet force.

Malfoy was in the middle of some other epic pronouncement, but he shut his mouth and blinked rapidly at that. "What?"

"Get out, I said," Harry said, and stalked towards him with a flourishing of his cloak and wand. "You have no right to tell me what to do with my life when you've spent your own so poorly." It was true, and better than the complicated things Harry would have said, the _pathetic _things, if he told Malfoy what he was really thinking.

And there was no reason for Malfoy to feel entitled to his thoughts.

Malfoy blinked and swallowed, then stood up and gave a serious little bow. "All right," he said. "Just consider that Andromeda never meant to drive you away, and I don't want you driven away either."

"Of course you do-"

Harry was about to say that had been one of Malfoy's goals ever since he was a boy, and why should it be different now? But Malfoy shook his head, eyes intense. "No. For whatever silly reason, I still feel connected to you. And maybe I can make up for this, a little, by letting you know Scorpius. Get to know him."

Harry turned his wand on Malfoy. Either Malfoy was not as great a fool as Harry had thought, or he knew the intent was deadly this time where it hadn't been others. He bowed his head and vanished with a pop that hurt Harry's ears.

Harry sat down slowly in the mud. He felt more clear-headed than he had since Malfoy's arrival, when he'd only wanted to kill him.

But so much didn't make sense. Mind-Healers and Malfoy wanting to introduce Harry to his son and being concerned about him? It didn't make sense, and Harry hated that it didn't make sense. He just hoped it would start to while he sorted it out in his head.

And in the meantime, he supposed he would send a Patronus to Andromeda.


	22. Questions Asked and Answered

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Twenty-Two—Questions Asked and Answered_

Harry shivered and opened his eyes. His first thought was that his Warming Charms had faded, and his next that that wasn't supposed to happen. He sat up and shook his head, leaning in to build up his fire again.

A soft silvery glow filtered from next to the fire, and he turned his head and saw Andromeda's Patronus sitting there, a squat cat with tufted ears that reminded Harry a little of both McGonagall's Animagus form and Kingsley's lynx Patronus. Andromeda said that it looked like a Kneazle she used to have.

"Harry, I received your message." The cat scuffed one paw in the dirt. "Don't stay here. Come home. Contact me."

The Patronus faded a moment later, exhausted by even the effort of communicating that much of a simple message. Harry shut his eyes and sat there, his hands on the sticks of the fire, until another shiver shook him and he arranged the kindling and cast an _Incendio_. And then he sat there in the warmth of that fire, forlorn and aching with a desire for peace.

But what that peace would consist of—no more arguments, never seeing Andromeda again, staying here—he didn't know.

In the end, he didn't reply to Andromeda's Patronus message, not that night. She had waited until the middle of the night to send one to him, Harry reasoned, rolling over and casting the charm that would fill his blanket with warmth and hopefully last longer than the mere ones that had touched the air with heat would. She could wait until morning.

* * *

"Teddy said something about his Uncle Harry," Scorpius announced that morning, bouncing his spoon off the table and watching Draco out of the corner of his eye.

Draco knew that Scorpius was waiting for him to say something about the spoon. And Draco did want to. It was getting the table coated with porridge. He knew from experiments on his own as a child that porridge dried into a sticky, hard mess with no one to clean it up, and he wanted to call for a house-elf and have it done _now_.

But if the house-elves had ever let a stain go to become permanent on the table, Draco hadn't found it yet. Which meant the house-elves would take care of it when he and Scorpius weren't looking, the way they did most chores in the house. Draco forced himself to smile and look more closely at Scorpius instead. "Did he? Well, yes, he knows Harry Potter. Maybe someday you'll meet him too."

He had thought this was Scorpius's question, but Scorpius shook his head. "_I_ want an uncle."

"You have an uncle," said Draco, which was true if they were talking about the same way Teddy had an uncle. "You have Uncle Blaise. And Uncle Theo, if he ever comes back from overseas." Theodore had taken Draco's abrupt disappearance better than he'd expected, although he'd warned Draco that he expected another visit sooner rather than later.

"But I want another one." Scorpius stared at Draco, and his lip trembled a little. "I want one who takes me places and gives me things."

"But your Uncle Blaise does that," said Draco. He thought of the trip to Muggle London that had started this problem with Scorpius not wanting to be a Malfoy in the first place. "Like that trip a few weeks ago with him?"

Scorpius paused as if thinking back all that time was an effort beyond him. Maybe it was, although Draco didn't think so. "But I want another uncle," he finally settled on, and with that tone that meant Draco wasn't going to budge him from the desire, unreasonable or not, until either another one took its place or this one was fulfilled.

"Very well," said Draco, and smiled a little as he did what he had planned on and what he really should have seen coming before this. "Then we can go over to visit Teddy tomorrow, and maybe his Uncle Harry will be there."

"He wants to meet me?" Scorpius looked uncertain again, and scared, and very young. But he _was_. Draco didn't think there was anything wrong with allowing his child to be a child.

_Well, you don't think there's anything wrong with it _now, said the tiny, treacherous voice in his head that Draco didn't often hear, hadn't heard for years when he was making the decisions that he had thought were right. _You thought it was wrong until Ethan Starfall advised you otherwise._

Draco leaned his chin in his palm for a second and told Scorpius, "Yes, he likes children. I think he'd like to meet you." Meanwhile, his mind buzzed along an entirely different track, one that was becoming all too familiar. The track that led to Ethan Starfall, who was Harry Potter, who was…

Still connected to him. Maybe neither of them wanted to be connected, maybe it was a connection that would only do them harm in the end, but that was the way it was, and Draco had to accept it.

"Then I'll see him," said Scorpius, and as if that was the only promise he had needed, he returned to his food.

Draco eyed him in brief wonder. He had a much better relationship with his son now, and it seemed that he had only needed to do a few little things differently.

_That's another thing I owe to Potter. Another reason that I need to talk to him, until I either don't owe him anymore or I can figure out what I need to pay him._

If there turned out to be a deeper connection than that, perhaps based on the affection Draco was sure Scorpius could arouse in anyone, Draco would…not object.

* * *

Harry sighed and turned around, letting the hot water cascade over him. It felt as though it had been weeks since he'd had a shower, even though it was only a few days. He had led Auror teams that were in the field longer than that.

_I don't care._

He didn't. He had returned to his home from Godric's Hollow, and he didn't plan on going back right away. But he didn't have to return to work, either, and so far neither of his friends had tried to contact him. They probably understood, which Andromeda hadn't, that he needed more time to recover before he talked to anyone.

When he stepped out of the shower, though, there were three owls waiting, and one of them was from Andromeda and one was from Hermione. Harry wrapped the towel around his waist and turned to the black owl waiting with the envelope that held the seal of the Ministry, ignoring the loud, annoyed hoots of protest from the other two.

The letter had Kingsley's signature at the bottom. Harry verified that the minute he opened it up. Then he told himself to stop being a coward, and read the letter itself.

_Dear Harry,_

_Andromeda firecalled me looking for you, and said that you weren't to be found in your usual haunts. I think that you ought to consider getting some time and talk from a Mind-Healer when you come back to your job. Keep in mind that there are a number of them attached to the Aurors who would be welcoming of any communication you wished to make._

Harry hissed. Kingsley had no idea what Harry wanted to talk about, and Harry didn't want to tell Mind-Healers about Ethan for the same reason that he didn't want to tell his friends about Ethan. He didn't want to see the deep pity in their eyes. The first thing Hermione would tell him was that it was a poor coping mechanism, and Harry would either have to agree or look stupid.

When he picked up Andromeda's message, it was a steely invitation over to her house, and a question about why he hadn't responded right away to her Patronus, even when he'd sent one the next day. It closed with a hint about Teddy missing him.

Hermione had decided to be less formal and less manipulative, and so blunt that Harry winced reading her letter.

_Obviously something is going on. Ron told me he thought there might be a problem when you were injured so many times so close together after Ginny's announcement that she was pregnant, but I didn't think much of it. Now I do. Come over here so we can talk to you and figure out what's going on._

Harry put the letter down and stared at the owl, at all of the owls, waiting for a response. Then he shook his head. He didn't want to respond. He didn't want to talk to anyone, any more than he had wanted to talk when Malfoy showed up in the graveyard. He wouldn't have talked then if Malfoy's taunts hadn't stung him into it.

"No reply," he told the owls, all of whom hooted disapprovingly on different notes. Harry ignored that, shooed them out of his house, and turned back to consider the problem of what to do that day, now that he was on his own and he wasn't going to talk to anybody who wanted to talk to him.

He wanted to go back and finish rebuilding his parents' house in Godric's Hollow. But that was a project that would take him more than one day, and anyway, he wanted to save it for a time when he was as deep down in sorrow as he'd been when he first went there.

_What do I do with myself now that I have no job and no obligations?_

He ended up sitting in front of the fire in his drawing room, staring into the flames and trying to make his mind relax utterly. He couldn't remember the last time that had really been the case.

There had always been some worry buzzing along beside him, polluting his thoughts in their softest hours, making him think about a case or Ginny or the divorce or his lack of children, even when he had Ethan. Now that he didn't have Ethan, Harry had to wonder what kind of barrier he would manage to raise against those thoughts, the angry ones that made him want to vomit with anxiety sometimes.

He would have to find _something_.

But what?

For long, long hours, or maybe minutes of contemplation that felt like hours, he had no answer. He watched the rise and fall of the flames, despite knowing that it had no more answer than he did. He waited with one hand clenched under his chin and another next to his ear, hoping that the snapping and sighing of the fire would wake some idea in him.

At last, he was able to answer himself. No matter what the Healers said, Harry knew he would only get some satisfaction from raising a child. He couldn't have his own, adopting in the Muggle world would be impossible with the kinds of checks that they ran on you and the limited availability of children, and adopting a wizard child would take a long time, with the claims of blood family always considered the most important. There had been plans to get together an orphanage after the war, but "war orphans" who didn't have parents turned out to have aunts, uncles, cousins, half-siblings, grandparents, all eager to take them.

Harry thought he needed the satisfaction of knowing he could raise multiple children who needed him _right now_.

And that meant Teddy. That meant Rose. That meant Hugo. Harry even briefly considered asking about helping Ginny with her child, and then his mind sheered sharply to the side. No, there were some things he couldn't ask for, no matter what, and some things he couldn't put Ginny through, either.

Could it include Scorpius?

Harry closed his eyes. He thought that was what Malfoy had been offering, in the graveyard. And while the only things he knew about Scorpius came from Malfoy's letters and things he'd said—and that was probably a biased portrait—the main thing Harry needed to know about him was that he was five years old, and lonely. Someone who Harry might be able to help, a child who might need him.

_Even if that means associating with his bastard of a father?_

Harry grimaced. If Scorpius really needed him, then yes, he'd do it, the same way he would have made an effort to get along with Andromeda if he didn't like her so that Teddy could have them both.

But at the moment, he really had no idea if Scorpius was like that. Maybe he and Malfoy were doing better right now and there was no need for a second father figure. Harry would need to know the truth before he embarked on meeting Scorpius.

So he stood up, found parchment and ink and quill, and set about what he once would have thought he never would do again: writing a letter to Draco Malfoy.

* * *

Draco smoothed down his robes, charcoal-grey ones that he had chosen because they were probably the nicest ones he owned, and told himself not to jitter with excitement. Just because Potter had sent him a letter and Draco had sent him one back saying that Potter should meet them over at Andromeda's house and judge what Scorpius was like for himself…

"Daddy, can we go now?"

They probably could, at that. Draco had got much too much into smoothing his robes, and he smiled apologetically at Scorpius and reached for the Floo powder. Then he paused. Scorpius glanced up at him, vibrating on his toes as he leaned forwards. He looked as if he'd like to spring through the fireplace and drag his cousin out to him.

"You said that you wanted an uncle like Teddy," said Draco, choosing his words carefully. One thing he no longer wanted to do was raise his son's hopes when he didn't know if he could actually give him what he promised.

"Yes?" Scorpius asked, as if he didn't remember the conversation.

_He's five. He may not._ Draco took a deep breath and a swallow, and said, "Well, what if I told you that Harry Potter is going to be visiting your aunt and cousin today?"

Scorpius blinked at him and seemed to give it deep thought. Then he said, "But he's there to visit Teddy. Not me."

"He could be there to visit you, too," said Draco. "If you want. If you need him." That, he suspected, was what it would come down to for Potter, although his letter had mostly talked about how he didn't know Scorpius that well and couldn't really be there for him until he did. But Draco knew that Potter had a weakness for children.

And if he wanted to help Draco raise Scorpius, not much was going to stop him. Draco was glad that he _had _told Potter it would be all right. He didn't much like his chances if he had wanted to stand in the way.

"I don't know," said Scorpius, and hooked a finger into his mouth. Draco found that appalling, a dirty and slimy habit, but he let Scorpius be for the moment. "I'll think about it."

He sounded enough like Draco then that Draco managed a smile, for all his anxiety. "You do that," he said, and this time he did throw the Floo powder in and call out Andromeda's address.

* * *

It hit hard, that first moment of watching Scorpius and Teddy play together.

Harry was standing quietly in the corner, shaking his head when Andromeda invited him to sit down, which she did about every two minutes. Teddy had been talking to him and showing off the newest trick he could do with a Potions kit Hermione had got him for his birthday, but when Scorpius appeared, his hair changed to blond and he ran over, laughing, to be with him.

That was all right with Harry. He wasn't jealous, not anymore. He stood there and listened and observed, while Malfoy and Andromeda made small talk on the sofa. The talk sounded distinctly stilted to Harry, but maybe this was how the Black family got to know each other.

_I have to remember that. No matter what I am to Teddy or Scorpius or the both of them, I can't be blood family._

Maybe that wouldn't matter, if he could establish a relationship with both of them that was cordial enough. But he would have to keep in mind that it mattered to the people who would actually raise them.

Scorpius stopped playing abruptly and turned around to stare at him. Teddy's hair changed to brown, and Harry scowled a little. He knew that sign. Teddy had done something that he felt guilty about. Maybe later in life he would be able to control his tendency to change his hair to match his mood, but right now he couldn't. And Harry sometimes thought that was the only advantage he or Andromeda had in keeping up with Teddy's plots.

"Mr. Potter?" Scorpius asked, and hooked a finger into the corner of his mouth. Harry tried not to stare. Teddy was too old for that, Hugo and Rose didn't do it, and it was among the cutest things he had ever seen.

Eventually, Harry realized that he should probably _speak _in response to Scorpius's question, and he cleared his throat and nodded. "Yes?"

"Do you like me?" Scorpius looked around as though he thought someone was going to punish him for the question, but while Malfoy was watching his son intently from the couch, he hardly seemed as if he was about to do that.

Harry's breath caught in his throat, and he spoke without thinking. "Of course I do. You're a nice kid."

Scorpius's eyes were big and watery, and he kept blinking at them and rubbing them as if he was going to cry. Harry hoped not. He didn't really know the best way to deal with a crying Scorpius. Other kids he could handle. But each little kid was sort of unique.

"Then will you be my Uncle Harry the way you are Teddy's?" Scorpius flashed Teddy a look that Harry could interpret well despite not knowing much about Scorpius. He was jealous.

Maybe it was just that he wanted Harry Potter for an uncle. Maybe Teddy had been bragging about Harry and the way he spoiled Teddy too much. Maybe it was because Malfoy didn't have any siblings and Scorpius was lonely.

But Harry was about as capable of refusing a request like that as he was of marrying Ginny and adopting her children as his own.

"If you want me to," Harry said, crouching down without thinking about it, and extending a hand for Scorpius to take, "then of course I will."

Scorpius beamed as he reached out and took his hand. Harry choked at the warmth of it, a little sticky where Scorpius had had his fingers in his mouth. At the moment, Harry couldn't look around and see if Andromeda and Malfoy had proud expressions on their faces, or annoyed ones, or what.

What _mattered _was that Scorpius needed him. And for a kid that needed him, Harry was willing to put with a lot of pure-blood Slytherin wankery.

* * *

_I'm glad that I was here to see this._

Draco could feel Andromeda's stare alternating between himself and Potter, as if she was trying to guess which one of them had set this up. But Draco thought one of the best things about it was that _no _one had set it up. Scorpius had reached out, and Potter had fallen into his hand like a plum. The only thing Draco had needed to do was bring them together.

Draco did have to shake his head when he saw the naked longing shining in Potter's eyes. _You'd think the truth about his infertility would have leaked out before now. All you have to do is see him next to a child and you can see how much he wants one._

Andromeda touched his elbow. Draco looked at her, and she leaned towards him and spoke in a low voice that Draco was sure neither the children nor Potter could hear. "Did you tell him that he could do this?"

Draco didn't know if she was talking about Scorpius or Potter. Either way, the answer was the same. "Yes."

"Even with that tension between you that you won't tell me about?" Andromeda's gaze was as remote and wary as a hawk's.

"I don't think that's as important as you're making it out to be," said Draco passively, head turned to the side so he could avoid her glare. Her fingers rapped on the couch for a moment, once, twice, and she opened her mouth to say something, but Teddy spoke before she could.

"You'll still be my uncle, too, right?" Teddy asked, pressing close to Potter and looking up at him with an expression that made Draco raise his eyebrows. He wondered if Teddy felt abandoned by his parents since they'd died not long after he was born.

"Of course I will." Potter reached over and ruffled Teddy's hair. Draco opened his mouth, wondering if he should tell Potter that Scorpius didn't much like that particular gesture, but Potter shot him a keen glance and abruptly pulled him into the conversation. "But you could probably also have an uncle in your cousin, too."

"Cousin Draco?" Teddy turned in place on his hands and knees and stared at him. "But you're my cousin, not my uncle, right?"

"I am," said Draco. "Your first cousin once removed." He thought it was important to know the precise degree of relationship, and Teddy's education was behind Scorpius's in that respect. "But that doesn't mean that I can't be your uncle as well, if you're talking about an uncle as a man who takes care of you and respects you."

Potter looked at him for a moment with his eyebrows rising, but turned away before Draco could catch his gaze. "That's right," he told Scorpius. "I can be your uncle even though I'm not...related to you."

Draco heard the catch in Potter's voice. He knew the reason, and moved ruthlessly to suppress the way that Potter would misinterpret things if left to himself. "You're related by choice," he told Potter. "That's a way that matters."

Potter met and held his eyes this time. Draco could almost feel the silent, stubborn bubbling between them, the motion of ideas and thoughts that Potter didn't want to acknowledge and might never come to acknowledge if Draco didn't force him to.

"By choice is a good thing," said Teddy, and turned to Scorpius. "It's my choice right now that we have cake."

"We can have cake? For lunch?" Scorpius looked as if this was a moment of unholy joy. Draco just barely kept from rolling his eyes. The joy part he knew about; the unholy part was promised by the gleam in Scorpius's eyes.

"Yes," said Andromeda, standing up and gliding towards the kitchen. "Just as soon as your Uncle Harry comes with me and makes it. You will, won't you, Harry?"

Draco looked at Potter and blinked. It was unexpected, so he asked the first question that had entered his head. "You cook?"

"I'm full of surprises," said Potter, with a curl of his lip that Draco would have found obnoxious a week ago. He disappeared into the kitchen with the two boys clamoring after him. Scorpius wanted to know why they couldn't eat the cake right _now_, and Teddy was reassuring him that Uncle Harry's baking was worth waiting for.

Draco stood where he had been, in a shaft of sunlight, and felt a long, slow bolt of contentment move through him.

_Maybe this will work._


	23. So Connected

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Twenty-Three—So Connected_

Harry wiped chocolate out of his eyes, and then snorted at Andromeda's pointed look. Yes, he knew that he now had chocolate on his forehead. He got out his wand and cast a Cleaning Charm on himself.

But then he darted a look at Teddy and Scorpius, sitting at the kitchen table and each eating an enormous slice of chocolate cake, and smiled. It had been worth whatever little inconveniences and messes he had to go through.

"So you can bake, Potter. I'm surprised."

Harry had to work hard not to stiffen up at Malfoy's voice. He supposed that reaction would be a long time fading. He deliberately bent down and put the knife he'd used to cut the cake into the sink before he answered. "As I said, I can do a lot that you don't know about."

Andromeda stepped back and raised her eyebrows. Harry thought she would probably interfere, since she wanted to know what the source of tension between them was, and cast _Aguamenti _with more force than necessary. The crash of the water into the sink, on top of the plates and pans and other utensils he'd used, and the necessary charms to cause the water to boil fully occupied his attention for a minute.

Not long enough. Already Malfoy was pressing to the counterattack. "Do you think that you can keep on surprising me for long enough to be interesting?"

Harry eyed him cautiously over his shoulder. What was Malfoy playing at? A quick glance at the kids showed that Andromeda was talking to them and admiring Scorpius's pattern of chocolate crumbs on his plate, so at least they wouldn't get involved if this turned into an argument.

Not that Harry wanted it to. If Scorpius was lonely, Harry knew in his bones the best thing he could do for the poor kid was encourage his dad to spend more time with him and stop shoving pure-blood nonsense down his throat.

"I don't see why I have to be interesting," he said, and cast the charm that made small scrubbing brushes fly into the soapy water and start rubbing the dirty dishes. "We just spend time together with our kids, that's all."

"Is it all?" Malfoy sounded a little disappointed.

Harry rolled his eyes and Transfigured another scrubbing brush out of a thread on his jumper. He'd learned a lot of useful charms from Molly. "Yes," he said, and floated Teddy's plate over from the table. Teddy was not only done with his cake, he looked like he was at that stage where he was going to see if he could cram it into someone else's face. No matter how much Harry and Andromeda scolded him, he never tired of that game. "Of course it is. What did you expect? Hugs all around?"

"I think that we could talk a little more," said Malfoy, and leaned an elbow on the counter to watch Harry work. Harry held back a snort. Of _course _those were their respective positions. "We are in a sort of unique relationship."

"It's called, 'you murdered my fantasy life and we're connected by my godson being a cousin of yours,'" said Harry, and lowered his voice, because distracted or not, Andromeda had a habit of paying attention at the most _inconvenient _times. "I don't know what else you want me to say, Malfoy."

"Maybe admit that this relationship is more than that." Malfoy had flushed pink, hot enough that he looked as if Harry could cook something on his cheeks. "Maybe admit that we have to talk about this sooner or later."

"Are you all right, boys?"

_And then again, _Harry thought as he smiled gratefully at Andromeda, _sometimes she saves the day._ "Perfectly," he said, and cast the charm that would part the boiling water and let him see the dishes. It didn't look as though anything in the kitchen was still dirty except for Scorpius's plate and maybe Harry's own face, so Harry cheerfully floated Scorpius's plate over to him and nodded to everyone in general. "That was good fun, but I have to be going."

"Why?" Andromeda folded her arms and gave Harry a hard stare. "I thought you had a holiday from work for the week."

"I need to do something with my life other than being an Auror," said Harry, matching her stare for stare. "That's part of what I'll do this week, work that out."

"But being an Auror is what you _do_," Teddy broke in, and his hair had changed to black this time. Not the black that reflected Harry's, either, and which Harry often found charming against his will when Teddy was in trouble, but a flat and greasy sheen that resembled Snape's. "You can't stop being an Auror!"

"Why would you?" Scorpius asked, and popped the finger back in his mouth when Harry looked at him. Harry was starting to think it was a nervous gesture, and wondered idly if Malfoy had noticed the connection to Scorpius's mood or not.

"Because sometimes there are things more important than being an Auror," said Harry. "More important even than helping people." _Like getting my head on straight and realizing that I'll never have blood children and coming up with a permanent solution to my grief. _But there were things one didn't say to children, whatever their age.

"Like what?" Teddy asked, and put Harry's resolve to the test.

"Like living the sort of life you want," said Malfoy, and Harry whipped around to face him. Malfoy wasn't looking at him, though, but at Teddy, and his face was serious and serene. "Like learning that you can't change everything, but you can change a few things, and those are things that matter to you but not necessarily to other people."

Teddy glanced back and forth between Harry and Malfoy. For that matter, Harry felt like doing the same thing. "So…Uncle Harry can't be himself because he's an Auror?" Teddy asked dubiously.

Harry answered before Malfoy could come up with something else that confused Teddy. "I still want to help people," he told Teddy. He could feel Malfoy's eyes on his face, but fuck if he was going to look up and acknowledge that right now. "But sometimes I'm the one who needs help."

Teddy's confusion melted into an angelic smile, and his hair became the bright, gleaming yellow it went when he thought he had a good idea. "I can help you with that, Uncle Harry! I _like _helping you!"

Harry thought of some of the incidents at St. Mungo's and Ron and Hermione's house and even here when Teddy had thought he was helping, and managed a smile. "I appreciate that, Teddy. But it takes a lot of time and skill to help someone like me, you know. I need to—talk to someone who has that skill."

"What's wrong with you, Uncle Harry?" Teddy critically looked at Harry's face, as if he could see signs of illness that way. "Are you sick?"

"Yes, Harry," said Andromeda. "You don't look sick to me."

Harry gave her an exasperated glance, which Andromeda answered with a bland one. He didn't see why she needed to pry into this, especially when therapy with a Mind-Healer would be hard enough to explain to a nine-year-old in the first place. And he couldn't forget the Malfoy audience, listening with wide eyes that might seem identical if Harry looked at them.

He didn't look. "It's complicated," he said. "And has to deal with things that I'd prefer to keep private."

"Surely you can talk about them to family."

_Oh, fuck you, anyway, _Harry wanted to tell her. Bringing it up like this in front of Teddy would mean that he couldn't just walk away or scream at her, though. And she was standing there with eyes like an eagle's, as uncaring. She was so eager for him to forgive her that she was pushing everything _far _too fast.

But Harry did have more self-control than some people thought he did, and he refrained from screaming at her. He only shrugged a little and said, "Even with family, there are secrets I prefer to keep." He had never told Andromeda about Ethan, sure, but not about the Dursleys, either. Ron and Hermione were the only ones who knew that much detail of them, although given that he'd seen the bars on Harry's bedroom window, Harry thought George could probably make a good guess.

Andromeda took a little step back, apparently baffled by his reticence. Maybe it was because Harry had been thinking of the Dursleys when he said that to her, and so she seemed to hear more secrets than one in his voice.

But she wasn't giving up either. "You know that I—didn't mean certain things I said the last time I saw you, Harry," she said, delicately. "Please. Tell me what you plan to do."

"He just said that he was going to _think _about that," said Malfoy, and his voice crackled and hissed like lightning. "How can he tell you when he has to sort out the ideas in his own head? Can't you leave him alone for a second?"

Harry stared at Malfoy. Teddy stared at him. Scorpius stared at him. Malfoy seemed to realize a moment later that he'd been oddly defensive of Harry, and his eyes fell and he flushed again.

"Harry can choose what he wants to do and who he trusts to his secrets to, of course," said Andromeda, and her voice was spiky. "But if he gives us a hint, then we might be able to help him better."

Harry stared at her a second, until he snorted. "Can't give you a hint of what I don't have a single idea about," he said, a little smugly. His own uncertainty, which had been so frustrating, was his greatest protection against Andromeda's probing. "I'll send you a Patronus or an owl when I do know."

"When will we see you again?"

Harry had started to open his mouth and give a scathing reply to that, when he realized that he had misheard the direction the voice had come from. He'd been so focused on Andromeda that he'd forgotten there were other people there who could ask questions. And this voice wasn't Teddy's.

Harry knelt down in front of Scorpius and took his hands. "I don't know," he said gently. "I don't know a lot right now. You know how sometimes adults need to think about things so they don't cause problems?"

Not the most subtle allusion, but Scorpius only looked at his father for a moment, and then turned back and stared at Harry with soft, subtly blinking eyes. "Yes."

Harry nodded encouragingly. "I need to think about that right now."

"Are you going to give Teddy to his grandparents while you decide?"

Harry blinked, then realized that must be what Malfoy had done with Scorpius while he was meditating on Ethan and his own insanity, and hopefully on how to be a better father. "No," he said. "Andromeda is Teddy's grandmother, you see. He already lives with her. I visit, but I don't take care of him all the time."

"Oh." Scorpius looked back and forth between Teddy and Andromeda with an expression that Harry found unexpectedly hilarious. Scorpius's face seemed to say that he'd envied Teddy, but now he didn't.

Andromeda folded her arms and tapped her foot on the floor a little. "But you'll let me know when you're ready to visit again, Harry."

"Yes." Harry nodded and looked at Malfoy, whose gaze he'd been avoiding for the last little while. "Maybe it can be a day when you and Scorpius visit, so I can see him as well."

Malfoy's face blazed with a delicate pink color. "And so that you can see me as well, I hope," he said.

Harry checked a sigh. So there were _two _Blacks in the kitchen who wouldn't take no for an answer, although Malfoy had been more reasonable about it than Andromeda. "Yes. Of course I'll see you."

Malfoy's flush faded, but not his gaze. That remained locked with Harry's, and Harry turned away, irritated without knowing why. They seemed small and silly to him, these proddings and pickings. He had big things to think about, things that might determine the course of his life, and Andromeda wanted him to excuse her from all blame and Malfoy wanted—Harry didn't even know what. The promise of a continued connection? It didn't have much to do with forgiveness.

As for Andromeda, coming over to the house should be enough in the first place to tell her that he didn't bear her an eternal grudge.

"Good-bye, Uncle Harry."

Harry started and glanced down. Scorpius was holding his hand out, the way he'd probably been taught to shake hands with any leaving adult to be polite. Malfoy looked torn between pride and exasperation as he aimed his wand at Scorpius.

"Let me clean off his fingers, Potter, he's had them in his mouth—"

Harry caught Scorpius's hand and shook, ignoring the sensation of stickiness. He got worse from Hugo most times he went over to Ron and Hermione's house. He held Malfoy's eyes, watched them blink in confusion and then turn down to his wand as though he didn't know why he was holding it at all.

"I don't mind a bit of dirt," said Harry evenly, and let Malfoy interpret that how he would. He turned around and hugged Teddy, the way he usually did, then nodded to Andromeda. She was stretching out one arm, tentatively, but she pulled it back to her side at his nod, and stood a little taller, hand closing hard. "Andromeda."

"Harry." Her eyes followed him as he turned away and walked towards the front door, and Harry knew they did. But that was just too bad. Harry would need either more time or another apology, and at the moment, she acted as if she didn't want to give him either.

"Potter."

And now Malfoy was behind him. "I can say goodbye to you, too," Harry told him, a bit exasperated. He couldn't keep up with Malfoy's moods. He wanted Harry to stay away from him, he wanted his advice, he wanted Harry to meet and like his kid, he wanted Harry to do strange invisible things that involved reading his mind.

Malfoy's mouth shut on whatever he'd been about to say, and his face went blank. "Yes. Do."

Harry shrugged. At least this would get him out of Andromeda's house and away from whatever strange plan Malfoy had launched regarding him. "Fine. Bye."

Malfoy stood there with his hand propped on his chin for a second, then sighed. "Good-bye, Potter. I'll let you know when I next have free time to bring Scorpius."

_As though he has that busy a schedule, _Harry thought in blank wonder. He knew Malfoy didn't have a job, or he would never have started brooding on Scorpius and lost himself in ennui and madness the way he had. He bit his lip to avoid snapping, though. He had been lost, too, although it was in a way he still thought of as healthier than Malfoy's manner of handling things.

"Fine," he said, and finally, he escaped. He shook his head as he walked briskly down the path outside Andromeda's house to the point where he always Apparated. You'd think Malfoy was the one who'd lost his fantasy life, and Andromeda was the one who had been insulted by a reference to blood family.

Honestly, give him kids any day. He could be with them and be happy, and it wouldn't expose him to strange adults.

Harry paused, and not because the thought had reminded him, again, that he didn't have kids. Perhaps there was something in the thought, the disappearing tail of an idea, that would be good to meditate on later.

And that was what he did when he got home and could stretch himself out on a couch in front of the hearth and sip from a glass of Firewhisky. The idea came back and sat in his head, and he turned it around and snorted a little and laughed a little. Why hadn't he thought of it before?

Because he'd been busy being an Auror, and immersing himself in Ethan's imagined family life, of course. And because it was so different from work he'd considered doing before, even when he still had the capacity to have kids and a marriage, and he'd had every expectation of a busy, happy, long life with Ginny. He had wanted to help people. For him, that meant the Auror program.

But there was more than one way to help people, especially in a world where, even years later, some people were still trying to cope with the effects of the war. Harry had read the stories of lost grandparents, aunts, cousins, how sometimes only one parent and child would survive. There were enough people to care for the children that there weren't really any war _orphans_ as such, but there were reduced families. And after the shock of getting back on one's feet and realizing that the war was over came a host of problems you'd never had to think about when you lived in a large family.

He'd been looking for a way to help, for something he could do that would give him what he needed and stop him from sinking into obsession over being an Auror.

Perhaps this was it.

After a long consideration, Harry took down parchment and ink and started writing to the current Special Undersecretary to the Minister. She could tell him where he should direct the letter he had in mind, to what part of the Ministry. Harry might have worked as an Auror for years now, but that didn't mean he knew _every _Department.

* * *

"I trust that you've settled some of the things that made you run away so suddenly?"

Draco gave Theodore a strained smile. He had thought that he was going to see him abroad, perhaps in Vienna, but instead, Theodore had shown up at the Manor this morning and asked to be let in. Draco had—there was no really good reason to keep him out—but he did have to admit that he was listening for a firecall or the beat of an owl's wings the entire time he was talking with his friend.

"Some of them," he said, when he realized that Theodore was waiting for an answer and not simply sitting there and consuming Draco's good wine. "There was someone who—irritated me and intrigued me in equal measure. I think I've settled matters so that I at least have the time I need to decide if I should pursue the connection."

Theodore spluttered into his wine, which wasn't like him. Draco had always known him as cultured, and he only seemed to have got more so since he'd started traveling the world. He did slam the glass down on a table and point at Draco, though. "Since when did you start becoming intimate with Harry Potter?"

Draco felt as though his heart had frozen and then exploded into a rain of shards like some of the Death Eater spells he'd seen during the war. He nearly drew his wand. "_What _did you say?" he asked, and he was proud of himself for keeping his seat and his wand hidden and his voice more or less even.

"I know it's only Harry Potter that it could be." Theodore waved one hand when Draco opened his mouth. "No, don't worry, I'm not going to blurt this out to Blaise or any of the gossips we know. I just can't believe it." His eyes glittered, and he gave Draco what Draco knew was a teasing smile, though at the moment it upset him more than that. "It has to be Harry Potter. He's the only one who could make you react this way."

Draco turned his head away. He knew he was flushing, and he _hated _that. He shouldn't be that weak, that cheap, that predictable.

At least it was providing entertainment for Theodore, if the way he locked his fist beneath his chin and surveyed Draco with frank delight was any indication.

"Fine," Draco managed to grind out at last. "Yes, it's Harry Potter. But the relationship is nothing like—what you think it is." This was one reason that he hadn't wanted to spend much time with Theodore in the last few years. The man could find sex in _everything_.

"I didn't say that it had to be," Theodore replied smartly. "I didn't think it was. Or else I would have already asked you if he was good in bed."

Draco turned around, hissing. "He's been giving me advice on how to raise Scorpius, if you _must _know. He has—a godson, and lots of experience with his friends' children. He was the one who told me some things were normal that I didn't know were normal." Not even to Theodore, who he knew wouldn't tell anyone, would he betray Potter's secret about not being able to have children. Silly or not, it seemed too sacred and personal for him to do that.

"All right, and that's even true, from what I can see in your eyes." Theodore shook his head in amazement, but held up his hands when Draco hissed at him. "Like I said, I won't doubt, and I won't ask you anymore. You're too upset about it. When you want to discuss it rationally and in more detail, then talk to me."

Draco blinked. He already knew that he couldn't discuss this with Blaise, who would make fun of him forever. But Theodore had never occurred to him as a possible candidate. "Really?"

Theodore pointed his glass at Draco. "You may think that you know all about me and what I would do, but you don't, all right? And that means that you have to think more closely about the way I would _really _react, instead of the Theodore that you've built up in your head."

Draco took a long, slow look at him, and then nodded. "I'll remember that."

Strangely, after that it really was easy to move to a different conversational topic, and soon he and Theodore were laughing away, like they used to.

But the idea remained in the back of Draco's mind all the time.

_If I ever get things settled with Potter…_

And Theodore's other question was there, too.

_How's he in bed?_

_Like I would know. Like I would care._

All Draco knew right now was that he wanted to be connected to Potter, and what they had wasn't enough. He wondered if he could say what _would _be enough, though.

_Maybe not._


	24. A Certain Kind of Help

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Twenty-Four—A Certain Kind of Help_

Harry leaned back with a sigh. For the first time in a long time, a letter from the Ministry wasn't bringing him misery, unwelcome news, or facts that he knew were true but didn't want to deal with.

It was _such _a change that he read the letter again just to be sure.

_Dear Mr. Harry Potter,_

_After the war, orphans were received into their extended families. A few rare Muggleborn students whose parents had been targeted were placed in orphanages, but claimed by families of their friends almost immediately afterwards. You are right that the wizarding world currently has no shortage of families for their children._

_However, according to the records in my keeping, many of those families are struggling. They need help with money, with child care arrangements—in a few cases, the witches and wizards who took in the children have either large families of their own or are too old to keep up with youngsters—and with simple practicalities, like the size of their houses and clothes for the children. Some of them have asked for help. Some have not, for reasons like pure-blood pride or not knowing how to contact the Ministry or reluctance to let others know that they took in a child without being able to provide for it adequately._

_The service you recommended is a strong and much-needed idea. I know that almost all the publicity surrounding you and your actions has been negative, especially in recent years since your divorce, but I hope you won't let that change your mind. These families could use Galleons, but more than that, they could use the impression that someone cares._

_Sincerely,_

_Katherine Huggins,_

_Head of Child Welfare Services._

Harry smiled and laid the letter down beside him. He had wondered how well those families who took in the children would cope with a sudden addition, especially since a lot of them would probably be nursing their own grief for siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents. But he couldn't just approach them and ask without making sure the Ministry hadn't made arrangements for them.

It hadn't. There was no central service like that.

Harry could come up with one.

The more he thought about it, the more he thought it might work—both for the families involved and to salve some of the pain that was left over from the loss of his future children, and Ethan. Sure, it would be a lot of work and take a lot of money. But Harry had experience in beating seemingly impossible odds, and he had the Galleons. He had sometimes lain awake at night wondering what he was going to do with his money. The Potter vaults combined with the fortune he had inherited from Sirius seemed like too much for one person. But he had comforted himself, then, with the thought that his children could have it and decide what they wanted to do with it when they did.

Now…

_Maybe this will work, _Harry thought, flicking one finger against the side of the letter. _Maybe this will make it so that I can spend time with a lot of different families, and that won't make it hurt so much when one child needs someone other than me._

And maybe it was even selfish to think that way. Maybe he should be satisfied with the attention that he could have from Rose and Hugo and Teddy, and the other Weasley children, and forget about the fact that part of him still ached with going back to his empty house at night.

But he was through castigating himself for being selfish, and feeling guilty for things he couldn't help. It never led anywhere good. It was guilt that had driven him to keep secrets and lie and do other stupid things.

So Harry would try setting up this business that other people could help him with, if they wanted, and see if sharing the joy he wanted to feel, spreading the care he wanted to do through multiple families, would make the ache go away permanently.

_It's worth a try, anyway. And it's something more than I had a week ago, _he thought, and put the letter aside to begin writing a different kind of letter.

* * *

Draco sighed and sat back, rubbing his face. He had just had another argument with Scorpius about whether Scorpius could go over to his grandparents' house. Scorpius had said he'd left a toy there and wanted to get it.

In hindsight, Draco should have been suspicious the minute Scorpius just said "a toy" and nothing else.

So Draco had agreed, but he'd firecalled his parents first, because he didn't think their relationship right now was the kind that would just let him show up unexpectedly. Scorpius would probably have been welcome if he'd ridden a hippogriff over.

_And whose fault is that?_

Draco knew very well whose fault it was; he was working on repairing it. In the meantime, he would keep his complaints to himself.

So Draco had smiled politely when his father's face appeared in the fire, and made the sort of small talk that wasn't appropriate for their situation but was more appropriate than anything else, and then asked, "Can we come over? Scorpius left a toy over there the last time he visited, and I think he wants to see you, too."

Lucius had drawn himself up. Draco blinked. He didn't think his parents had the sort of commitments anymore at which their grandson was unwelcome.

Lucius said, in a soft, chill tone, "He took all his toys with him."

"He did?" Draco did remember coming home laden with what seemed like half the contents of Diagon Alley's toyshops, but he hadn't counted specific ones. And Scorpius had taken an awful lot with him in the first place. "Well, let me ask him which one it was. Maybe it got overlooked."

He turned to Scorpius. "Which toy was it, Scorp? Your grandfather says he doesn't think there's anything there."

Scorpius immediately ducked his head and traced one foot on the floor, watching Draco out of wide eyes.

Draco bit back his impatience and watched Scorpius instead. "Scorpius?" he whispered, as the silence increased and lengthened.

"I don't remember," Scorpius mumbled.

"But this morning, you said that it was over at your grandparents' house and you wanted to go get it." Draco let a little of the impatience out. He was afraid that he would explode in a more damaging way if he didn't. "What does that mean? You could remember what it was then, but you can't now?"

Silence, except for the soft shuffling sound of Scorpius's foot dragging across the carpet.

"I'm sure there was no toy left here," Lucius said abruptly. "We had the house-elves investigate Scorpius's room after he left. Nothing that I can remember, and you know the house-elves would hardly throw something away that they thought might be precious."

Draco nodded unwillingly. One of his ancestors had expressed his preference for a bust to be left uncleaned, and after that, the house-elves had come anxiously to him and asked about getting rid of every piece of dust until he had made his orders clearer. "Or even something that's not precious."

"Yes," said Lucius, with a faint smile that faded in the next moment, seemingly burned to ash in the fires of his eyes.

"I'll talk to him," said Draco, although he suspected he already knew what he would find, and Lucius nodded and disappeared from the fire, leaving Draco to turn around with a sigh to confront his son.

"I don't _remember_," said Scorpius, and he turned his back and started to walk out of the sitting room. Draco saw his hands clenched and trembling next to his sides, and that made his response softer than it otherwise would have been. He never wanted his son to be afraid of him.

"Did you lie to me, Scorpius? Or do you really not remember what the toy is?"

Scorpius said nothing, and Draco walked over and crouched down in front of him. Scorpius hated that, he knew, because for some reason it was hard for him to deceive people when he was looking them in the eye—much harder than it had been for Draco at that same age.

That probably said good things about his son, but at the moment, Draco was too tired to think of them.

"Can you please tell me?" he asked, and heard his voice scrape with tiredness. He was probably playing too much into his son's desires, probably handling him too roughly, probably doing everything wrong. But he wanted to know why Scorpius would lie about something as simple as this, when he could have just asked if they could visit Lucius and Narcissa and Draco would have firecalled the same way.

Scorpius stared at him with big eyes. "Maybe I should question your grandparents' house-elves?" Draco added, because it was the only other thing he could think of.

"I _hate _you," Scorpius whispered, and then turned and ran out of the room.

Draco had risen slowly to his feet with his head throbbing, and after calling Izzy and making sure that the elves would keep Scorpius from hurting himself or breaking too many precious objects, made his way to the study that he had set up as a meditation room long ago. He hadn't often used it since then, because he had discovered that he had more effective techniques than meditation, at least when he wanted to deliver his temper against someone else.

But he had shut the door behind him and sat down on the soft white rug in front of the red brick fireplace, the plainest one in the Manor. The walls were the same dim red color, made so by the softly flickering candles on the tables, the torches that never burned any color but pure gold, the carpet that barely scraped against Draco's thighs. He had descended into himself the way he used to know how to do, when he was practicing Occlumency on a regular basis, trying to find the patience that would let him be a good father.

He felt calmer than he had when he first confronted Scorpius, but the question remained, banging around in his skull. _What am I going to do with him? How do I know if I'm actually being a good parent?_

Perhaps it was stupid, given that he now had another relative with a young child, but he could think of only one person to talk to.

He tried to make the letter measured this time. Not cold, not warm, not pleading. Just laying out the situation and explaining that he didn't know why Scorpius had lied or why it mattered so much to him, or to Scorpius. But he did want to know, and he did, as he acknowledged to himself when the owl was flying away, want Potter to come.

* * *

"I think it's a bit mental, mate." Ron cleared his throat in apology a second later. Harry suspected it was because Hermione's elbow had nudged him underneath the table. "You're giving up your whole career as an Auror?"

Harry folded his hands near his plate. They had had dinner, but of course the washing-up had turned into games of chase with Rose, with Hugo pulling himself up on against cabinets and curtains and toddling after them. The shrieks of laughter still made Harry's mouth ache with smiling.

Now, though, he needed to be serious, and he needed his best friends to understand him.

"Maybe it's a bit mental," he said slowly. "But there's a need, and I could fill it." He glanced from face to face, silently willing Hermione to accept his words, then Ron. If Hermione did it first, Ron would follow. "And I need to be needed."

"We need you in the Aurors!" Ron leaned forwards, and his eyes were flashing and his face had flushed. "I know you got injured, but we've been short-handed with you on holiday, mate! You'll always have a place here."

"You were the one who told Kingsley that I had a death wish," Harry muttered.

Hermione touched Ron on the arm this time, and reached across the table to take Harry's hand. "He was doing what he thought he had to do," she said, slowly and kindly, as if she could somehow escape Harry getting upset if she spoke that way. "And you're doing what you think you have to, Harry. I know that. It's just—could you explain it a little more, so we can see if we can understand it?"

Harry thought of a few sarcastic replies, but in the end, they were less valuable than his friends' continued good will. "I want to be with children. There's no way I can have any of my own, and—Rose and Hugo and Teddy are wonderful, but they're not enough."

"I understand," said Hermione, although she looked a little sad. "Have you talked to Andromeda about moving into her place and helping take care of Teddy? I know you thought of that last year, and you and Andromeda were talking about it…"

"It wouldn't be a good idea right now," Harry said. In truth, he and Andromeda had talked about the idea when Teddy was being more difficult than usual and moping that all the other children he knew had _two _parents, but Andromeda predicted he would grow out of it, and he had. "Not with this tension between us."

Hermione squeezed his hand again. "You know she didn't mean it that way."

Harry just looked at her, and said nothing. Ron nodded in Hermione's place and murmured, "So you want to be with more children, and you don't want to move in with a family."

_I want that more than anything in the world. If I could raise a child with someone I loved_.

But his romance with Ginny was dead, had been dead probably from the moment he'd told her about his condition, and Harry had no one else. "Yes. Being with lots of families, having lots of children whose welfare I'm involved in, might help."

"Then I can see the sense of it." Ron still said it as though he expected Harry to throw up his hands and declare allegiance to the Aurors again in a second, but his face had relaxed. He gave Harry a look that Harry accepted, even though it was full of pity. "Ginny getting pregnant did a number on your head, didn't it, mate?"

Harry sighed. "Maybe." He didn't know why he'd been so reluctant to admit that before. It wasn't like Hermione or Ron would go tattling to Ginny on him, or even hinting that she should have stayed with Harry. They were long past that now, and Molly was the only member of the family who sometimes gave Harry wistful looks.

"But I can't have children with her," he said. "I don't know if I ever could have. There were huge, gaping cracks in our marriage that we would have fallen into sooner or later."

Ron opened his mouth, then shut it when Hermione shook her head at him. Hermione glanced sideways at Harry, bit her lip, and looked away. "Maybe it was you being cursed that opened those cracks," she said.

Harry snorted. "That had a lot to do with why we got divorced, but no. What ruined our marriage was yelling at each other and being so quick to accuse each other, and not trusting each other enough. Those would have been problems no matter what. And they would have been a lot worse with children in the marriage."

Hermione hesitated. "Maybe you're right."

Harry nodded. On this, he was sure. He had been the only one who had seen his marriage fall apart from the inside—the only one in the room, anyway. He had made his decision, and he felt brave and adult and contented as he sat there with his best friends.

At least, he did until Malfoy's owl hooted at him, and landed on the table so fast that it left claw marks in the wood.

Harry stared at the bloody bird, who was hopping up and down in place now, turning to face him and beating its wings so urgently that it looked as if it was about to break one. Then Harry closed his eyes and shook his head. "Not _again_," he said.

"Who's it from?"

Harry almost started in surprise at Ron's question, and then snorted at himself. Of course he couldn't expect his friends to recognize the owl. _Their _lives had been blissfully free of Malfoy's letters.

"Someone I didn't expect to be contacting me this soon," he said, and let them assume it was from Andromeda as he took and opened the letter.

_Potter,_

_I feel silly writing to you, but there's something I have to ask your advice on._

Just reading that Malfoy felt this was a little silly made Harry relax. At least he wasn't the only one in this peculiar position.

_Scorpius told me that he wanted to visit his grandparents today, that he left a toy over at their house. My father was the one to tell me that no toy had been left behind, because the house-elves would have found it and returned it to us if there had been. When I asked Scorpius about it, he first claimed that he couldn't remember what toy it was, and then it became obvious that he was lying to me. He ran away when I tried to press the issue, and as far as I can figure out, he's now hiding in his room. He told me that he hated me before he ran._

_What would you do? Or if you need to think about it in that manner, what would Ethan do?_

Malfoy hadn't even signed his name. Well, he didn't need to, Harry acknowledged—whether or not it was also a gesture to keep his identity secret from too-interested people who might try to read the letter.

Harry hesitated. Scorpius was someone who had a parent, who had two parents, although Harry didn't know how often Astoria visited or how close she was to her son. But surely, he had people who cared for him.

But—

_So does Teddy._

And if Scorpius wasn't Harry's child, even the child of someone Harry was particularly close to, he was still _a _child. Harry wondered how he would have felt if Teddy had been left with a sullen, withdrawn father. Or mother. It could have happened if either Remus or Tonks had lived, he thought. Remus had almost left Teddy before he was born. Tonks had cared so much for Remus that she might have made her grief the center of her life.

No, he would do this for Scorpius, and not Malfoy.

"Who _is _that letter from, mate?" Ron waved his hand up and down in front of Harry's eyes.

Harry started, and shook his head. He had forgotten how it must look to his friends, with him just sitting there and staring at the letter. He put it aside and gave them a smile he knew was weak. "Someone—who needs help."

Ron was quicker than he had thought he would be, or Harry's face was more revealing. "Is this about bloody _Malfoy_ again?" he asked. "It is, isn't it?"

Harry tamped down on the defensive urge to reply quickly. "It's about his son," he said, when he thought he could speak with a level voice. "Someone who hasn't done anything to me, and does need my help."

"I am surprised that Malfoy is writing to you and not Andromeda, now that he's back in contact with her," said Hermione. Her voice was neutral, but her eyes, fastened on Harry's face, were alight with curiosity.

Harry realized abruptly that he had no idea what he should say about Malfoy without revealing Ethan. And he still wasn't ready to do that.

On the other hand, he had asked his friends to trust him when it came to ignoring their letters for a while, and then listening to his plan for this center that would help the families with orphaned children. So he could ask them to trust him a little farther.

"I have to go talk to Malfoy," he said, standing up. "Thanks for dinner."

"Mate?" Ron was staring at him with a slightly wounded expression, as though he didn't know him at all.

Harry managed to shrug with one shoulder, and smile at much the same moment. "This is the way it is, Ron. Sorry."

Hermione nodded slowly. "I hope that you can explain it to us someday, Harry. Maybe when you and Malfoy feel more comfortable about it."

"Maybe," was all Harry would say, and he waved to them and Flooed home, where he would grab his thickest cloak and Apparate to the gates of Malfoy Manor.

It was only when he was pulling the cloak on that it occurred to him Malfoy might have wanted a letter back, not for Harry to come himself.

Harry paused, then shrugged and pulled the cloak all the way on. He was out the door in the same instant.


	25. Soothing the Pain

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Twenty-Five—Soothing the Pain_

Harry Apparated to the place just outside the gates of Malfoy Manor without trouble. He was never going to forget what _this _place looked like, although there were times when he wished he could.

He strode, footsteps crunching on the gravel, up to the gates. There he paused. They hadn't swung back to admit him, and he was unsure, for a second, whether knocking was a good idea. There might be a spell that would fling him back a hundred feet, or maybe a huge face would appear and stick out its tongue at any Gryffindor who dared approach.

Then Harry rolled his eyes. The Malfoy he had met recently was melodramatic in a lot of ways, but it was also true that Harry thought he was past such petty pranks. He would prefer to make his visitors feel unwelcome personally, most likely, with a good dose of coldness.

Harry did lift a Shield Charm behind him, just in case, before he reached out and rapped on the gates, calling out, "Malfoy? It's Harry Potter. I got your owl, and I came as soon as I could."

No response for long moments. Harry pulled his cloak close around him, and shivered. It wasn't that cold, but the feeling of being utterly alone in front of a place where he'd previously been captured by Death Eaters was unnerving nonetheless.

The next second, there was a house-elf behind the bars of the gate, bowing so deeply that Harry was sure its nose scraped the gravel. "Master Harry Potter is being welcome, and is coming in," it said, in an unusually high-pitched voice for a house-elf, and unlocked the gates with no more than a snap of its fingers. "Izzy is being sorry for the wait."

"It's no trouble," said Harry. He wondered, for a second, if Malfoy had ordered all the elves to treat him that politely, or if it had something to do with Dobby.

Harry did have to close his eyes as he followed Izzy up towards the house. Dobby had died free, he reminded himself. That was the important part. And if he still didn't like Lucius for what he had put Dobby through, well, that had been Lucius. It wasn't Lucius he was here to speak with.

They arrived at the front of the house, and Izzy hopped up the stairs in front of him. The door opened before the elf could touch it, though.

Malfoy stood framed in the doorway, staring down in such intense silence that Harry bristled again. If Malfoy didn't want him, just wanted words on a page, then Harry would take himself away again. He wanted to help, but he wouldn't stay to be insulted.

Instead, Malfoy made a convulsive motion, and then turned and ran back into the house. Harry blinked, but Izzy was beckoning him, so he walked up the stairs instead of away. He wondered if Malfoy had run off to be sick in the bathroom or something.

Malfoy was waiting just inside, though, his arms folded as though he was the one who'd been out in the cold. His eyes studied Harry's every movement intently as Harry took off his cloak. Harry looked for a peg to hang up the cloak, and Izzy whisked it neatly away from him, shaking her head and clucking her tongue a little.

Harry didn't listen to the elf's mutters about how some people hadn't grown up in a proper house, and instead focused on Malfoy. "How is he?"

Malfoy had opened his mouth to say something, but snapped it shut now, with a bit of color high on his cheeks. A second later, he muttered, "Of course. You're here for my son."

_I thought that was what he wrote to me for—Oh. _This was about the weird connection that Malfoy thought they had, or wanted to have, or something in between. But Harry wasn't going to talk to Malfoy about that weird thing right now when there was a child in pain. He asked again, "How is he? Is he angry? Frustrated? Frightened? Am I going to frighten him more, showing up like this?"

"Angry and frustrated," said Malfoy, and tipped his head to Harry, reminding Harry oddly of someone bowing to an altar, before he turned to lead Harry up the corridor. "He didn't want to lie to me, I think, but being caught out in the lie frustrated him more."

"Yeah," Harry muttered, abstracted, and remembering some times that the Dursleys had caught him in a lie. "Is he in his bedroom?"

Malfoy looked back at him and nodded. He seemed oddly natural, Harry thought, framed by blank white marble walls, different and better than he looked in Andromeda's house. "That's where he usually goes when he gets like this."

Harry held his peace, but he did wonder. When Teddy got that frustrated, Harry would go after him and try to talk it out. Malfoy seemed content to let his son, much younger than Teddy, run off without knowing where he was or tracking him down in case he got into trouble.

_On the other hand, maybe that's why he owled me._

"Here."

Harry started and looked up. He must have been deeper in thought than he'd realized; they'd already passed through what seemed to be several miles of corridors thick with carpet and bare with stone, and now Malfoy paused in front of a deep brown door banded with gold. Harry shook his head.

Malfoy caught his eye. "Some people do have the money to live in luxury, Potter," he said, voice almost a hiss that Harry didn't need Parseltongue to translate.

"Is that what Scorpius wants, though?" Harry asked, fed up with Malfoy simultaneously acting like someone who needed his help and the prat Harry remembered from school. "Or would he be even happier if his parents had stayed together and he had some siblings and less toys but more attention?"

Malfoy flinched as if Harry had struck him. Harry sighed, said, "Fine, I'm sorry," and turned and knocked on the door.

Scorpius uttered a wordless scream from inside, and something flew against the door and shattered. Malfoy jumped violently. Harry, a little more used to this sort of thing from his time as an Auror, frowned and asked, "Do you want me to go away, Scorpius?"

There was immediate silence, cutting off another scream that had been in the process of beginning, and Harry heard feet shuffling closer to the door. Then Scorpius whispered, "Mr. Potter?"

"You can call me Uncle Harry," said Harry. "I think I told you that."

He had thought that maybe that would make Scorpius laugh or something, but instead, the door flew open and Scorpius grabbed him so tight around the waist that Harry grunted in surprise. Harry reached down and picked him up, and Scorpius grabbed him around the neck instead and ducked his head down so he was buried in Harry's shoulder, or neck, or the complicated place where his body became both.

"Scorpius…" Harry whispered, cradling him close.

He could feel the warm weight in his arms, the weight that Teddy was too big to be now and Rose and Hugo were too impatient to be—as soon as Harry picked one of them up, they started squirming to be put down—and hear a noise like a sniffle. He didn't think Scorpius was upset, though.

And a second later, sure enough, Scorpius whispered, "It's all going to be okay now that _you're _here."

"Maybe it will be," said Harry, and tried to look away when he caught a glimpse of Malfoy's angry face.

He didn't really _want _to be better with Malfoy's own son than Malfoy was. On the other hand, Malfoy had been the one to divorce his wife, and the one to discipline Scorpius and try to make him into a "proper" pure-blood all these years. Maybe Scorpius needed someone other than his father right now, at least to turn him around and listen to him and then give him a gentle push back in the direction of his blood parent.

Harry set Scorpius back down on the floor, although from the way he clung to Harry he didn't want to go, and then crouched down and held his eyes. "Can you tell me what happened?"

"Daddy should have told you." Scorpius gave a proud little toss of his neck in Draco's direction, his eyes narrowed at Harry as though Harry was trying to trick him into a confession instead of simply push him into one.

Harry bit his lip so he wouldn't betray how cute he found this, and said simply, "I know there are two sides to every story. You tell me yours."

Scorpius peered at him with astonished eyes, and then at Malfoy. Maybe he thought he'd interrupt. For that matter, Harry was surprised Malfoy hadn't.

But when he looked at him, he saw Malfoy standing with his hands locked together behind his back and his lip firm and his eyes far away, as though listening to distant music. That was probably as good a sign as Harry would get that Malfoy didn't want to interfere.

"This is my side," said Scorpius, still uncertainly, and sneaked another look at his father. The emotion Harry saw in the boy's face decided him. Scorpius _did _want to love and be loved by his father; he just felt so distant from Malfoy at the moment that it was no wonder he was having trouble.

Harry nodded. "Yes?" he asked, and arranged himself more comfortably on the floor. He was already getting old, he thought. His knees protested the crouch the way they wouldn't have just a few years ago.

Scorpius looked at him again, sighed, and said, "I wanted to go see Granddad and Grand-mum." He paused. Harry waited. Scorpius mumbled, "I didn't think Daddy would let me go see them again so soon. So I said I left a toy there."

Malfoy started to speak. Harry caught his eye and shook his head once, sharply. Malfoy turned his head away and snapped his jaw shut. Harry faced Scorpius and tried to sound as calm as he could. "Why did you think he wouldn't let you see them?"

"They were—we were just there. I was just there." Scorpius was so busily fumbling for words that he didn't notice the hand his father had reached towards him. Harry picked Scorpius up and lifted him into his lap, and Scorpius leaned forwards and pillowed his head unselfconsciously against Harry's chest. Harry turned around so Malfoy could rest his hand on his son's head. Scorpius sighed, but didn't look up. "I was there while Daddy was gone."

"And it seemed like you were just there? And you thought your father didn't want you to go back so soon?" Harry tried to keep his voice gentle so Malfoy could touch Scorpius and Scorpius would ease into the touch instead of moving away when he saw it was his father. Harry himself gently petted Scorpius's hair and the nape of his neck.

"Yes," said Scorpius, and his voice slid down. "But Granddad Lucius said I didn't leave a toy, and then he said he was going to talk to the house-elves, and Daddy said I was _lying_." He lifted his head and fixed Malfoy with such a deep, disappointed gaze that Harry choked back what he would have said. "I wasn't lying! I just wanted to visit them!"

Malfoy waited, and Harry had to applaud the ruthless suppressing of what he was sure was going to be irritated, snappish words. Instead, Malfoy arched an eyebrow and murmured, "I would have let you go if that was what you wanted, Scorpius."

"But you would have been angry at me!" Scorpius buried his face in Harry's robes as though he couldn't bear to look at Malfoy.

"I was angry because you didn't tell me what you wanted." Malfoy was being very careful, his words falling like small snowflakes, and Scorpius looked up. "Then you lied. That was the wrong thing. What you wanted—Scorpius, it wasn't wrong. I wouldn't have been angry at you for that."

Scorpius squinted at him. "You have been before."

Harry had no idea of the truth of that or not. He thought he had to interfere, though, or the argument would turn into an endless circle more appropriate to kids of Scorpius's age than a kid and an adult. He cleared his throat softly. Both Malfoys glanced at him.

_God, does Scorpius have any idea how like his dad he looks? _Not that Scorpius could probably hide his name or his heritage anyway—that hair would give him away at once—but it was a little uncanny.

"I think that this could be cleared up by talking to each other," said Harry. "And maybe some apologizing. Scorpius, are you sorry that you lied? Do you understand why it was wrong?"

Scorpius resorted to burying his head in Harry's robe collar again, but Harry just petted his hair and waited until Scorpius finally mumbled, "I understand why it was wrong. I wouldn't do it again."

Malfoy's eyes said clearly how little he believed that. Once again, though, he was smart enough to keep the disbelief to himself. Harry gave him a stern glance, just in case he forgot, and asked, "And do you apologize for getting angry at your son in the past when he wanted to go visit his grandparents?"

Malfoy flushed, opened his mouth, probably to defend his side of the story, and then eyed the way Scorpius's hands clung to Harry. He deflated. "I'm sorry I was angry," he said, and his voice was soft and barren.

Harry nodded, and determined to ignore the uncomfortable currents swirling through the room right now. "Now, Scorpius, do you think you can go and hug your father? I think he's been missing you."

Malfoy shot him a wide-eyed, betrayed gaze that Harry also determined to ignore. If Malfoy thought keeping from Scorpius how much he missed him was the right course, Harry could only say that he was mistaken, and he would leave it at that.

Scorpius sat up and stared at Malfoy. "But he doesn't look like he misses me," he said, and turned back to Harry. "He just looks like Daddy."

_Then the cold expression and the stuck-up nose are business as usual? _Harry managed to stifle his sigh, which neither father nor son would take well right now. "I think that he could look like he misses you," he said. "Just like you could hug him." He shot Malfoy a suggestive glance that Malfoy would have to be an idiot to misread.

From the way Malfoy's jaw set, he didn't misread it, but he could have resisted it. Harry blinked a little and tried to make his eyes as appealing as possible. He knew there was a way to do it, because Andromeda had told him that Harry was as bad as Teddy for begging sometimes. He just had never done it on purpose before.

Malfoy nodded a little, and then knelt and stretched out his arms. Scorpius made a noise like something small and wounded, and thrashed around in Harry's grip.

Harry started. He hadn't realized that he still had his arms around Scorpius's waist, making it difficult for him to move even if he wanted to. He lifted them, and Scorpius ran over to Malfoy and burrowed his head into his robes in turn.

Malfoy lifted a hand and splayed it across the back of Scorpius's neck, as if he was holding something unbearably precious. Which was true, but not the only gesture like that that he needed to make. Harry caught his eye and mouthed, _Hug him!_

And when Malfoy folded his arms in and then tugged Scorpius fiercely against him, Harry was flooded with the satisfaction of a job well-done. He had worried a little about quitting the Aurors, but he didn't think he needed to if he would feel this good helping all those families with children that needed him.

He started to stand up, and both Malfoy and Scorpius turned around and regarded him. Harry paused, blinking. It was harder than he had thought to separate those faces when they were side-by-side like that, even harder than when he had thought Scorpius looked like his father.

"I'm glad that you can get along," said Harry, and smiled at them. Malfoy's smile in return was sour. Well, maybe Harry had sounded condescending. He blamed it on not being as good at this as he would get, once he had practice and some people to advise him. "Do you need me for anything else, Malfoy? If not, I'll leave—"

"But you just _got _here!" Scorpius twisted hard enough that Malfoy almost dropped him, but he didn't run back to Harry. He stood there and looked anxiously at Harry instead. "Teddy said you don't leave fast when you come to visit _him_!"

Harry blinked and inclined his head. "That's true, but I think you need some time alone with your dad, don't you?" He looked at Malfoy. Scorpius seemed to respect him now. Surely it would mean that Malfoy would want Harry to leave.

But Scorpius said, "I want you to stay here!" and Malfoy nodded slowly. He probably didn't have the same motivations for it, Harry thought, stifling a mad desire to giggle. The last thing he thought Malfoy was was jealous of Teddy.

"I would like you to have dinner with us," said Malfoy haughtily, his head uplifted and his cheeks coloring a little, as if he was listening to himself. "It's the least reward I can offer for what you did for us."

"That's right!" Scorpius looked pleased with the extra excuse, and stretched out one hand to Harry without letting go of Malfoy's hand. "Now you can stay here and eat the house-elves' cooking and keep me from putting a spoon full of chocolate on the table!"

Harry blinked, at a loss. "Do you do that a lot?" he asked. He would have thought it was one of the (many) things that Malfoy wouldn't allow.

Malfoy caught his eye and gave a small shrug. Scorpius said, "I try not to do it, but sometimes I forget." He was bouncing, looking back and forth between Malfoy and Harry as though he assumed that between the two of them, they could make this make sense. "You can stay and have dinner with us, and then you can stay over, and then we can go and visit Teddy tomorrow!"

Malfoy turned his head abruptly away, but not before Harry saw the flush along his throat. He supposed that was Malfoy's way of indicating that he wouldn't be _displeased _if Harry stayed, although Harry thought it was still fucking weird.

"I don't know if Mr. Potter can do that." Malfoy's voice was stilted and strange after Scorpius's over-bubbling enthusiasm. "He might have a job to go to tomorrow, since we know he works as an Auror—"

"I'm giving that up," Harry said abruptly. He was just glad that he had already told Ron and Hermione. He couldn't have justified confessing it to Malfoy before them. "Being an Auror isn't a good fit for me. I need to be in a job that works with children."

Malfoy's head lifted like someone had yelled insults at him. "Oh?" he asked warily.

Scorpius broke in before Malfoy could say anything further or Harry could confirm it. "Then you could work with _me!_" he declared ecstatically, and gave Harry a smile that showed how much of a cute kid he could be when not throwing a tantrum. "I'm a child! You could work baking for me and Teddy!"

Malfoy smiled as though in spite of himself. Harry liked it a lot better than most of his planned smiles. "You do bake supremely well, Potter," he murmured.

Harry shook his head, visions of a bakery dissipating. He liked the idea he had written to the Ministry about—and told Ron and Hermione about—better. "No, I'm going to run a service that helps families who lost relatives during the war and adopted their relatives' children. They need help with room and feeding the children and taking care of them and—oh, all sorts of things. No one really made any arrangements for that. They just assumed that because all the orphans got adopted, things were fine. They're really not."

Malfoy blinked, and blinked again. Scorpius wasn't ready to give up. "Take care of me _and _Teddy," he said. He hesitated, then added, "And maybe Heloise?"

"Who's Heloise?" Harry asked.

Malfoy cut in before Scorpius could give an answer that would probably have been confusing. "Heloise Yaxley," he said. "Granddaughter of a minor branch of the family. She and Scorpius play together sometimes." He was staring at Harry again, consideringly. "You realize that such a job would involve a lot of changes in your life and a lot of work?"

"No _shi_—"

"_Potter_."

Harry cut himself off in time. He supposed that he'd been spoiled by the free and easy environment of the Auror Department, which considered swearing a perfectly acceptable response to a lot of the cases they saw. "I know it'll take a lot of work," he said, with a repressive look at Malfoy. Really, Malfoy thought this was news to him? "But it's work I want to do. Half the people in the Ministry think I have a death wish, or I'm obsessed with glory. It would be nice to work at a job that helps people but no one could accuse me of hunting glory in."

Malfoy's lip curled a little. "There are other things you can do. You're probably rich enough not to have to work."

"Money can't give me the one thing I really want." Harry's voice roughened despite himself. Seeing Scorpius standing there, all big eyes and tilted head, had set him off again. He started blindly at the wall until he was sure that he could speak without huskiness. "This will. Or at least, I have to try."

Malfoy continued staring at him in what seemed like a dazed state. Harry hid a roll of his eyes. In the end, he thought, what separated him and Malfoy wasn't their past or even their more recent scuffle over Ethan and other secrets. It was their incompatible worldviews. Malfoy had a child, so he thought children weren't as precious because he already possessed one. Or something. Harry had no doubt he valued his own son. He just didn't seem to extend the same value to other children in general.

Harry would have given his world for a Teddy, for a Scorpius, of his very own. It wasn't to be, so he would fill his heart with numbers of children instead.

"Anyway," Harry finished with a shake of his head, "I'm quitting that Auror job, so I don't have to be at work tomorrow."

"Then you can stay for dinner!" Scorpius said, with all the glee of someone who had found the most important part of the argument.

"He's right, Potter," Malfoy murmured, and picked his son up with a faint smile that didn't hide the edge of his own glee. "You can."

Harry hesitated again. "I already ate—"

"A small dinner!" Scorpius declared.

Malfoy didn't say anything, but looked at Harry over Scorpius's shoulder with his eyes almost closed.

Harry hesitated one more time, then shook his head and said, "All right." And it was hard to resist the impact of their faces together, not just to resist the sight of Scorpius's beaming smile.

_Not that I'll ever tell Malfoy that._


	26. An Awkward Dinner

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Twenty-Six—An Awkward Dinner_

If Draco had had to make dinner for Potter himself, he knew he would have messed it up. He had no idea what to make. He had no idea how to relate to Potter. He had no idea what had prompted him to ask Potter to stay for dinner, except that Scorpius had wanted it and Draco didn't want to tell him no when his son was in this fragile mood.

But what would he and Potter _talk _about, for Merlin's sake?

Draco was still brooding on that when they had been in the dining room for thirty minutes and eating for twenty. Potter sat in the seat across from Draco, biting his lip and sometimes staring at the table. Scorpius had propped himself up in his chair on his knees so that he could see Potter better. Draco opened his mouth to forbid that behavior, then closed it again. He didn't want to scold Scorpius in front of Potter. He didn't want to say anything that might spark conversation.

How had he felt when he opened the door and realized Potter had come himself, instead of an owl? Instead of Ethan, as it were?

Relieved. Disappointed. Frightened. Devastated. Unable to draw a breath.

Only the first emotion, out of all of those, made sense, and Draco was struggling not to show the rest. Potter would think he was mental. And he would have a right to think that.

Draco knew that they were connected, that he didn't want Potter to walk away again and ignore that connection, and that he couldn't explain the nature of the connection. That was the only thing he knew.

Theodore's explanation flashed into his head, and he dismissed it. Yes, it was possible he had an obsession with Potter. But that wasn't the same thing as sitting here and staring at him and then looking away again, unable to say a word. Draco had been straightforward about what he wanted from his obsessions. He had wanted Potter to pay attention to him. He had wanted the Dark Lord to guarantee his parents' safety. He had wanted his father's respect when they began to drift apart after Scorpius was born.

He had not the least idea what he wanted from Potter.

"I'm beginning to think this is a bad idea."

Draco started. His nerves thrummed as if they were harpstrings connected to Potter's mouth. He managed to force a smile and shake his head. "Why would it be?" he asked, and his voice was too loud for the hushed dining room. He coughed and tried to bring it down, and then he sounded artificial and fake as he said, "We asked you to stay, and you accepted. This is a perfectly normal dinner between host and guest."

Potter looked at him with eyes as wild as a stag's. "The last thing the relationship between us has ever been," he said slowly, "is _normal_."

"I have a lion," Scorpius volunteered. "A Muggle lion. I bought it when I was in London with Uncle Blaise. He takes me to _Muggle London_. I'm very responsible." He leaned forwards and caught Potter's eyes. He probably didn't understand the tension between the two of them, Draco thought, but he was responding to it.

That made Draco feel bad, again. He didn't want to make his son uncomfortable, when what he had asked Potter for lessons in was ways to make the relationship between them comforting and calm for Scorpius. "Perhaps I should—" he began.

"How often do you get to go to Muggle London?" Potter asked Scorpius, and shot a quick, false smile at Draco, at least as false as the one Draco gave him in return.

_Why did I think this would be easy? _There was a difference, Draco was discovering, between not wanting someone to walk out the door, and knowing what to say to them. He had experienced it before, sometimes, with his friends, especially when he had been busy shoving them away to concentrate on Scorpius, but Pansy would retort, and Blaise would laugh at him, and Theodore refused to be ignored. None of them were like this.

"I get to go sometimes," said Scorpius. "Daddy doesn't always let me go."

Potter frowned at Scorpius for the first time. Or maybe it was really the second or third time, and Draco was only thinking that it was the first because he was so much more sensitive to the frowns Potter shot at him. "Well, he might have reason for that, you know? Muggle London could be dangerous."

"Uncle Blaise can do anything." Scorpius sat up and shook his head. "Muggles aren't dangerous to a wizard."

This time, Potter looked at Draco, and Draco thought it was a glance of fellowship. Certainly the words seemed that way. "He doesn't know much history yet, does he?"

"No," Draco admitted. "It's one of the things that I neglected teaching him. At least," he added, not wanting to forget what Potter certainly wouldn't let him forget, "any history that's not the stories of his own family."

Potter's eyes closed for a second, and Draco braced for some sort of tirade about pure-blood histrionics. But instead, Potter nodded, murmured, "That was the kind I was most interested in when I was a kid," and turned back to Scorpius. "You know that your—Uncle Blaise can't use magic in front of the Muggles?"

"He would use it to save me."

Scorpius spoke with absolute certainty, and Draco sighed a little. He would have liked for Scorpius to have that much faith in him. But it was his own fault—in combination with other things like Astoria leaving—that it hadn't happened.

"He could use it to save you, but then both of you would be in danger," said Potter. "And the Ministry would have to send Obliviators. It's just better not to deal with Muggles when you use magic."

Draco held back a snort. That was the sort of position he had thought Potter would never come around to.

"What's an Obliviator?" Scorpius was frowning himself, but it was the sort of expression that meant he was being attentive.

"It's a person at the Ministry that uses Memory Charms on Muggles," said Potter, and his face became solemn. "They use the Memory Charm, and then the Muggles can't remember the magic they saw. So they use it when dragons escape or when someone Apparates in front of a Muggle. But it's not something that you _should _use all the time. When someone has too many Memory Charms cast on them, they can go insane. Or they can lose all their memories. Or their brains can be damaged. We want to avoid that."

Draco nodded slowly. So Potter hadn't changed completely enough to abandon his position that Muggles were okay. It was more that he saw the reason for the separation between the worlds, but didn't want it to damage Muggles.

"Uncle Blaise would do that to save me."

Potter reached across the table and tapped Scorpius's fingers sharply. "Only Obliviators are supposed to use Memory Charms. Is your Uncle Blaise an Obliviator?"

"Maybe he is, and he made me forget!" Scorpius seemed fascinated with the idea.

Potter did shoot a cautious sideways glance at Draco, but Draco shook his head at once. Blaise was many things—a good friend, a good entertainer of children, a luxurious layabout, someone who had more humor than Draco had known could exist in a person who had been in Slytherin House as a child between the wars. But Draco would definitely have known if Blaise was an Obliviator. Hell, the teasing he'd give Blaise about having a _career _would have taken years to subside.

"He isn't," said Potter firmly. "And I don't think that it's good to go into Muggle London and use magic at all. You might scare the Muggles away, and that's not what you want to do, is it? You go to have fun."

"Maybe part of the fun is scaring Muggles." Scorpius had an insolent set to his jaw that Draco knew well, although he didn't know if _Potter_ would recognize it for what it was.

"I didn't teach you that," said Draco. He didn't know he would speak until he did, and then he was also on his feet. Potter was staring at him. Well, he could stare. Draco walked around the table and put a heavy hand on Scorpius's shoulder, bearing down so that Scorpius couldn't mistake how much he meant the words. "You are to remember that you shouldn't bait Muggles."

"But we're not Muggles." Scorpius turned to face him with his little arms folded, and on his face was an expression that he must have imitated from Lucius. Draco knew he had _tried _to attain that expression himself, but he never had. "That means we're better than them. That's what you said. That we're better than Muggles."

Draco winced. Of all the times for his words to come back and accuse him…

But Potter was there, and although he seemed disposed not to take part right now, he would soon. Draco was on his own to defend this, or at least clarify it for Potter.

"I meant that we could do magic better than Muggles," he said, and knelt down. Scorpius looked skeptical, and Draco couldn't blame him. He was attempting to retrieve the situation, not speaking something he had meant at the time. But he meant it now. "Not that we should torment them or scare them. That's called Muggle-baiting, and it's a serious crime, Scorpius. I don't want you to ever do it."

"But Muggles are fun to scare." Scorpius's jaw jutted out. "That's what Uncle Blaise said."

"Maybe he meant it," Draco said. "I'm asking you not to do it. There are some things Malfoys are above, and baiting Muggles is one of them. We don't _need _to do it."

Scorpius just looked at him, and then stuck one finger in his mouth. Draco decided to read it as a gesture of nervousness instead of defiance, even though he had told Scorpius again and _again _not to do it.

"We need to live apart from Muggles," Draco told him, wishing he wasn't conscious of the silent, judging gaze from the other side of the table. He would do this so much better if he wasn't. On the other hand, without that gaze, he wouldn't have felt the need to justify himself at all. "The Muggles would be scared of us, if they saw us doing magic, and they might attack us. But you don't need to attack _them. _Do you attack things that you're scared of?"

"No," said Scorpius. "I call Izzy, and Izzy gets rid of the bugs."

Draco nodded. "And if you were ever in Muggle London and in trouble, you could call, and I would come save you. Or Uncle Blaise would. Or Mr. Potter," he added, catching Potter's attention across the table. "But you wouldn't attack them."

"What if I had to make them leave me alone?"

_What kinds of things did I teach him without meaning to? _

That was the crux of it, for Draco. He had done a lot of things with regard to his son that he was ashamed of now, but he had always thought he was doing it deliberately. To find out that Scorpius had picked up lessons from the way he acted and talked that Draco had never meant him to pick up…

"You wouldn't need to," he told Scorpius quietly. "You wouldn't be in Muggle London without one of us, and we would always protect you."

Scorpius peeked at him from under his fringe. "What if a bunch of them attacked us and took away your wand and they were standing on your head and yelling at me and I was the only one who was there to save you?"

Draco smiled a little. Scorpius's real fear was blending into childish fancy. This, he knew how to deal with. "Then we would deal with that. I would reach up and grab their ankles and roll the one standing on me off. Then I would Summon my wand. I can do that without my wand, you know."

"I didn't know that," said Scorpius, and stared at him.

Draco surprised a smile from Potter across the table. Well, as long as he was reconciling with his son, he didn't need to bother about what Potter was feeling.

Draco nodded. "It's a skill I practiced a long time ago, until I got good at it." No need to reveal to his son, yet, that his constant practice had been because of the war and his fear of being caught away from his wand when Death Eaters swaggered through the Manor. Scorpius would learn more history than Draco had taught him so far—history with a broader base and more implications—but Draco still intended to reveal what he thought a child should know slowly.

"Oh," said Scorpius, and was quiet for a second. Then he reached out and took Draco's hand, and Draco turned his hand over and squeezed Scorpius's lightly.

After a long second, Potter cleared his throat and asked, "Are we going to have pudding? Or should I go ahead and leave?"

"You can't leave yet," said Scorpius, and frowned at Potter in a way that Draco thought was entirely natural, not calculating, and his heart thumped warmly in his chest. "Pudding is _important_."

Potter raised one hand, his face solemn. He was holding back laughter, Draco knew, but at least he held it back, and spared Scorpius's dignity. Scorpius had been mocked and disregarded enough, even if Draco hadn't meant to do that at the time. "All right. So what are we going to have?" He looked at Draco.

"The house-elves usually decide," Draco said. "They have a list of my tastes and Scorpius's, and a calendar of how long it was since we last had something." He clapped his hands, and Izzy appeared, bowing.

"I hate the calendar," said Scorpius. "I could eat chocolate cake every day."

Draco smiled and touched his son's hair. Scorpius leaned into the touch. Draco knew better than to think it would last forever, but it was enormously comforting while he _did _have it.

"The pudding this day is bananas floating in cream and covered with chocolate and sliced strawberries," said Izzy in a high-pitched voice, looking at Potter from the corner of one eye. Draco wondered if Izzy was nervous about having a guest, which hadn't happened in a long time unless it was Blaise, or if she was nervous around Potter because she was afraid he would free her.

Potter leaned back with his hands clasped behind his head. "That sounds like it's worth staying for."

Izzy's face cleared, and she bowed. "Then pudding is coming up for master sirs in short while!" she said, and vanished again.

"Do you have any house-elves, Uncle Harry?" Scorpius asked, licking some juice off his spoon. Draco kept his peace, although ordinarily he would have said something to Scorpius about that. One could _sip _juice from a spoon, but one did not _lick _it.

"Sort of," Potter said, and sipped from the glass of pumpkin juice that he had, for Merlin knew what reason, requested with dinner. "I own an old house where an old house-elf lives. He spends a lot of his time at Hogwarts, though. He has a kid there."

"What's his name? What old house? Is it a house as old as this?" Scorpius sat proudly upright and gestured around the Manor in a way Draco had never seen him do. Maybe there was some hope of training him to have pride in his heritage after all.

"His name is Kreacher," said Potter, using the glass this time to hide what was probably an inappropriate smile. "And the house is called Number Twelve Grimmauld Place. It's a house your ancestors used to live in."

"My ancestors," said Scorpius, and looked at Draco.

Draco supposed the subject wasn't very inviting to Scorpius, after the long lectures that Draco had given him when he was trying to pour Malfoy history into Scorpius's head. "Your Black ancestors," he said. "Your grandmother's ancestors. You're named after them. You have a star name," he added, as Scorpius's eyes widened. "Your Black ancestors all had star names."

Scorpius twisted around and looked at Potter. "How come you own the house, Uncle Harry?" he asked.

Draco was just as glad to sit back and let Potter take over this part of the conversation. Responding intelligently and clearly to his son's questions was more exhausting than he had thought it would be.

But being a good father was exhausting, and that was something he should have known if he didn't already know it. He would remember it, for the future.

* * *

"Well, you had a—a cousin," Harry said. He couldn't remember, off the top of his head, what exact relation the Black family tapestry had shown between Scorpius and Sirius. "His name was Sirius Black. He didn't like his family much—"

"Why not?"

Harry looked at Malfoy. Malfoy just looked placidly back at him, his expression quivering a little with the smile he was suppressing. Harry could imagine what he was saying. _You come up with a way to explain this one._

"They were very stuck-up," Harry settled for saying. Once again, he didn't know how much Scorpius knew about the Black family history and the history of the wizarding war and Muggle-baiting and all the rest of it.

_Strange that I keep being associated with that history, long after I thought I would be able to leave it behind._

"They didn't like some of the things Sirius believed in," Harry continued. "He was Sorted into Gryffindor House at Hogwarts, and they didn't like that, either. So Sirius ran away, and his family disinherited him." From the way Scorpius's eyes widened, he was indeed familiar with that word—perhaps as a threat, though Harry hoped not. "So he never thought he would inherit the house. But most of his family was dead or—gone, so he did. And he was my godfather."

"Like you're Teddy's godfather?" Scorpius was so fascinated that he didn't seem to notice as the pudding appeared in front of them.

Harry took a bite of the thick mixture before he answered, and was glad to find it good. "Yes. In fact, Teddy's father was a friend of Sirius. That's one reason he wanted me to be Teddy's godfather."

He wondered for a moment if he had confused Scorpius, because he was blinking. But Scorpius seemed to be good at sorting out complex family relationships, because a second later he nodded. "And he left you the house in his will?"

"Yes," said Harry, a little surprised. _Well, once again, I shouldn't be surprised that inheritance and inheritance rights are something he knows about. _"So I own the house now. But it's sad and gloomy, and Sirius hated it, so I don't really like living there. I wouldn't destroy the house and free Kreacher, though, because that would be cruel. So I just keep it shut up and let Kreacher spend most of his time at Hogwarts. He likes doing that anyway."

Scorpius watched him with big eyes. Harry paused. Sometimes Scorpius seemed so fiery and willful, even more than Teddy had been at his age, and then he would do something that reminded Harry of how _serious _he could be.

_Well, with a father like that, how could it be otherwise? _Harry thought, and his gaze went to Malfoy.

Malfoy straightened his shoulders under Harry's gaze. "I raised him the way I thought fit," he muttered out of the side of his mouth. "It'll be different now, but at the time, I didn't know any better."

Harry thought about that, then shrugged. "Fine. It's true that I wouldn't have done a perfect job of raising my sons, either, if I'd been lucky enough to have them."

"You think it would have been multiple sons," Malfoy muttered. "And one daughter."

"That was my ideal life," Harry admitted, and turned back to Scorpius, who was getting restless, and who didn't need to know about Ethan and his father's part in destroying Harry's ideal life, either. "Maybe I'll leave the house to Teddy. He has Black blood, too, you know. His grandmother and yours are sisters. Or maybe I'll leave it to both of you."

Scorpius sat upright in his chair. "You want to leave it to me?"

"I think that I need to think about it," said Harry, and smiled at him. "But I don't really like it or use it, and it should go back to some people who are part of the Black family. Both of you are. Do you think you could share it?"

He meant to tease and take away Scorpius's thoughts from some of the seriousness, but Scorpius had something else on his mind. "I want to see it. The house that you're thinking about leaving me! I want to see it."

"Not right now," said Harry. "But I'll think about it, and maybe I'll invite you over to see it if I can get Kreacher to come back and dust it."

"I don't care about dust!" Scorpius looked so irritated that Harry bit his lip. He could see so many different sides to this child, and this time, he didn't envy Malfoy for having a son, but for having _this _one.

Harry didn't want to stop talking to him. He didn't want to leave.

But he did need to go home, since it was the end of dinner and the crisis between Malfoy and Scorpius seemed resolved, and he wanted to think about what had happened and if he had done the right thing or not. Maybe he had been too lenient with Scorpius. Maybe he had been too harsh with Malfoy. It was the sort of thing that would give him good practice with reassuring and helping other families with children, and then waving as they left.

"I do," said Harry, and stood up. "Kreacher can clean the house, and maybe you can see it sometime next week. I'll want to invite Teddy over, too, and that'll depend on Andromeda's schedule." He knew Andromeda had at least one meeting with a Healer next week. She wanted a Healer to look at Teddy now that every trace of the Black madness seemed to have disappeared and make sure he was _really _all right.

"You have to go?" Scorpius scowled at him.

"Yes," said Harry, and nodded at both of them, though he made sure that Malfoy got his fair share of the nod. "Thank you for having me over for dinner. Thank you for letting me spend time with you."

Malfoy gave him a single glance that Harry thought probably saw further than he wanted it to, but he nodded. "Scorpius, can you say goodbye to your Uncle Harry?" He pushed gently at the back of Scorpius's shoulder.

"Good-bye," said Scorpius, and held out fingers that weren't sticky at all to shake.

Harry knew he was probably beaming like a fool as he shook Scorpius's hand, but he did that with Teddy and Rose, too. If Malfoy narrowed his eyes at him, that was only because he didn't know Harry.

"Good-bye," said Harry solemnly, and walked to the front gates.

_That was fun. I wouldn't mind doing it again sometime._

Then he sighed. He knew that he should hope for things to go so well between Malfoy and Scorpius that he wouldn't need to come over again. They should be father and son to each other, without his interference.

But he still cast a glance back at Malfoy Manor before he Apparated.


	27. Standing at the Gates

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Twenty-Seven-Standing Before the Gates_

"We need to discuss this," said Kingsley's voice for approximately the sixth time.

Harry leaned back in his chair. He had answered the firecall when it came, but he saw no reason to be uncomfortable, kneeling down on the hearth to discuss something that had already, as far as he was concerned, been discussed. "I don't see why," he said calmly. "My resignation letter was clear, wasn't it?"

"You're resigning from the Aurors." Kingsley somehow made it sound like it was halfway between a question and a statement. Not that it mattered, because he wouldn't let either one of them be true.

Harry stretched his arms and gave him a sweet smile. "That's right."

"_Why_?"

Harry leaned in. "Because I realized it wasn't making me happy," he said. "Because I realized I depended on it too much, and I didn't want it to become a crutch. Because I realized what I care about is children, and spending time with them, and being an Auror hardly ever let me see children except when they were dead or bleeding. Because you put me on a week's holiday and I feel like I've got more accomplished in that week than I ever did in the year before that."

Kingsley's mouth was a little open by the end of that speech, but he clapped it shut a second later and gave Harry a stern look. "That week's holiday was meant to make you think about some things."

Harry had to smile, and he wondered how Kingsley didn't see the humor inherent in his own words. "It worked."

"Not-not in that way." Kingsley was shaking his head, speaking with difficulty, as though he couldn't believe that Harry didn't see things from the exact same perspective. "You're one of our best Aurors, Harry. We can't lose you."

Harry shrugged. "One of your best Aurors who had a death wish and was always getting injured. I think that I've been more of a liability than a benefit to the Auror Department lately. This solves that problem."

"Never more of a liability than a benefit." Kingsley was speaking earnestly now, his hand clutching something that might be the edge of the hearth. "Harry, what incentives do you need to come back? I believe that you're fully healthy now, and you could go back to fieldwork if that's what you want. Or-"

"Stop," Harry said quietly, and for a miracle, Kingsley did. "Don't embarrass yourself. You were right the first time, that I was spending too much time obsessing over my job and not enough time resting. I'd hate to see you undercut that concern for me and get me angry at you because you're concerned about effects on the Auror Department that haven't even started yet, and might never do so. You were right. Doesn't that matter?"

Kingsley sat back on his heels and regarded him unhappily. Harry was glad for the real serenity he could return that look with, instead of the false kind he would have had to use even a few days ago.

He'd been dying to return to his Auror job, until he realized that he wasn't. What he was dying for was something to do. He hadn't enjoyed the thought of the holiday when he thought it would be all sitting around and staring at the walls.

Once he had realized he could do something else, he'd never wanted the holiday to end.

"It matters," said Kingsley at last, slow and reluctant. "And if this is the best thing for you, Harry, then of course that's what you should do. No one could say that you haven't shed enough blood for your world or haven't fought hard enough for what you believe in."

"But," Harry prompted, when Kingsley hesitated at last.

"This is going to be a public relations _disaster_." Kingsley shook his head. "There are already articles brewing hinting that your holiday was actually a forced retirement because of some rivalry between you and other Aurors, or jealousy on my part because of the attention from the papers. Now I'll be known as the one who chased you away from the Department."

Harry laughed. "I'll need publicity for my business anyway. If you want, I'll give an interview firmly stating that it was no such thing. They might not believe it," he added, cutting off the next objection he knew Kingsley would use, "but there's always someone who won't believe anything I say. I can at least put my voice out there."

"Thank you, Harry." Kingsley sighed moodily and spent one more moment scrutinizing him. "Do you plan to try and reverse the curse that made you infertile? I know the Healers said that that combination of hexes couldn't be replicated, but..."

Harry shook his head firmly. "I know it can't be reversed. What matters to me is helping people, and spending time with children. And the idea I've come up with should allow me to do both."

Finally, Kingsley smiled, scratching under his robe collar in a way that told Harry the formal part of the interview was over. "Then I can hope for a happy ending from this after all. I hope you'll be happy, at least. And if you see any of those children you think would make good Auror recruits, don't hesitate to send them our way."

Harry flipped a salute, glad that Kingsley hadn't stayed unreasonable about this. "Will do. Though I expect to be dealing with children considerably younger than the recruitment age, for the most part."

"You can spot potential at any age," said Kingsley primly, and then something beeped off to the side. Kingsley looked in that direction and swore. "Already late for a meeting. Good luck, Harry. Resignation accepted."

He disappeared before Harry could say anything, but he was sure they'd said all they needed to say. Harry leaned back in his chair and shut his eyes, savoring the press of cloth against his back, the flex of muscles in his limbs. He might not have those things if he had continued as an Auror. It was the sort of job he could easily have died in, or got injured in. Ron was right. A few of those wounds to his leg might have made it hard for him to walk.

_I'll be doing what I want. And it'll be more than getting by, or more than the only thing in the world worth thinking about._

* * *

Scorpius was jittering around the house long before the time they were supposed to leave. Draco practiced the patience befitting a father by saying nothing about it. He kept his eyes on the notes in front of him, notes that he had made about the Malfoy properties and monies he, after all, was _supposed _to be managing, and only made a comment when Scorpius climbed up on the arm of a particularly ancient chair.

"You know that Grandfather Lucius wouldn't like you damaging that chair. It belonged to his father."

Scorpius flopped back into the chair with a scowl. Draco was sure that his target had been the porcelain dragon at the edge of the mantel, which an enterprising child might be able to reach standing on the chair arm. "How long until we leave?"

Draco flicked his wand in the movement for a _Tempus _Charm without looking up from the papers. Giving Scorpius too much attention in this mood would only encourage its persistence. "Twenty minutes."

"It's too _long!_ I want to go _now!_"

"If we go now, then Mr. Potter's house-elf might not have finished cleaning the house," Draco said, using the most effective tactic he could think of. "Then you would get your robes all over dust, and have to come back and take a bath."

Scorpius lifted himself up and flopped back again. Draco tensed, but didn't say anything. He knew the chair couldn't really be ruined by such treatment.

"Why do you call him Mr. Potter, when I can call him Uncle Harry?" Scorpius asked abruptly a minute later. He had twisted himself around so that his legs were up against the back of the chair, and his head dangled off the seat. He was looking at Draco upside-down, from an angle that made his face look incredibly like Narcissa's. "Don't you like him?"

_What a complicated question._

But Draco thought he could use the moment to teach Scorpius a lesson about some things he needed to learn anyway. He took one more look at the papers, then folded them away and turned to face Scorpius. Seeming to sense there was something more interesting to this particular answer than just a recitation of facts, Scorpius sat up and focused on Draco.

"When we were children, Mr. Potter and I were rivals," Draco began. "He was in Gryffindor, I was in Slytherin, and we were both Seekers on our Quidditch teams. It's hard for me to put that aside and see him as someone else, someone I won't have to fight anymore."

Scorpius's mouth dangled again. "But why did you ask him to come over and help me?"

Draco still wasn't about to mention Ethan Starfall. That was a secret that, in some ways, he would have been happier not to have discovered. "Because I know he's not a member of our family. He's about as far from a member of our family as he could get," he added wryly, with an irony that he knew wouldn't damage Scorpius if he didn't grasp it. "So he could see things from the outside. You remember when Uncle Blaise said something about that? The person who sees from the outside is the one who sees clearly?"

Blaise had actually said it in relation to one of those interminable disputes between Draco and Scorpius over whether Scorpius could eat a meal consisting only of biscuits, and he had taken Scorpius's side, said one meal was a small price to pay for peace and quiet, and given Scorpius the biscuits. But Draco hoped it was the saying Scorpius would tend to remember.

Scorpius nodded, his face intent. Draco wondered if it was just that they were discussing Potter that made him look like that, or whether it was having a discussion with his father. He hoped it was at least both.

"Mr. Potter sees us from the outside. I knew he would help us settle the fight." Draco shrugged. "And you seemed to like him. That's why I invited him."

Some deep light came to life in Scorpius's face. Draco had to pretend to turn back to his papers to avoid acknowledging it too much. It seemed that Scorpius was dazed with the very _thought _of Draco doing something because he knew Scorpius would like it.

That told Draco more about his inadequacies in relation to his son than Blaise's or Potter's or his parents' analyses ever could.

The Floo came to life, and Scorpius spun around with a little squeak. Draco hid a smile and took a step forwards, moving his wand in the gesture that would give permission to whoever was in the fireplace to open the connection fully. He had thought it a wise precaution after one of Scorpius's adventures with the flames coming to life the other day.

Potter's face appeared. He looked as though he had a smudge of dust above his forehead. He nodded. "It's ready, or as ready as it's going to get." He looked past Draco, and then Scorpius bounced over so Potter could see him. Potter's face relaxed as if it was melting. "There you are. Are you ready to come over and see Grimmauld Place? Teddy and Andromeda are already here."

"_Yes, _Uncle Harry!"

Draco brushed his hand against Scorpius's shoulder, but Scorpius didn't calm down, and maybe he didn't have to. "Thank you," Draco added, and Scorpius paused in his bouncing long enough to nod an acknowledgement.

"You're welcome." Potter looked as embarrassed as though no one had ever thanked him before. "Come on, then. I've opened the Floo on my side." His face disappeared.

"Ready, Scorpius?" Draco asked, picking up the Floo powder, and was greeted with a bounce and a scowl. He knew that Scorpius was beyond ready; this was more of a gentle tease. He had to admit, he was curious to see if Scorpius would snap at him.

But apparently, Scorpius was too eager to see what lay beyond the fire, in the house that Potter had promised he should inherit, to snap. He gave Draco a distracted nod and reeled into the fire, leaving Draco barely enough time to throw in the Floo powder.

Draco stepped out of the fire into a dark kitchen that looked as though someone had desperately tried to let in light, and failed. The cabinets were clean, at least, and so was the table in the center of the room. Scorpius stood there, turning around with his hands spread.

"Scorpius! Little cousin!"

Draco thought Teddy's voice laid too much emphasis on "little," but Scorpius ran excitedly over to Teddy and waved his arms. "Isn't it amazing? It's so _big!_"

Draco grimaced. For one thing, Scorpius had only seen one room, and was judging based on too little evidence. For another, even if it was large, it couldn't possibly be bigger than Malfoy Manor.

"It's pretty big," said Teddy, grinning down at Scorpius as if he, at least, found no fault with the terms. "And it's ours! Come on." He took Scorpius's hand and tugged him out of the room, barely missing Andromeda, who was coming in through the door.

Potter stepped up close beside Draco and murmured, "Don't take it so hard. It's the biggest thing that's ever been his, and I think he means that."

Draco wondered for a moment if Potter was a Legilimens, and then dismissed the notion. It was likelier that Potter was just exercising that uncanny knowledge of children that Draco had already wanted him to share a few times. "But he'll own Malfoy Manor someday."

"Does he now?" Potter raised an eyebrow.

"No," Draco admitted. He hoped that his frown was a frown and not a pout. For a moment, Potter looked oddly at him, and Draco thought he might have looked childish. His mother had always told him he did when he frowned too often.

Andromeda broke into their conversation. "Harry, is it true that you're planning to leave it to both Teddy and Scorpius?"

"Yes," said Potter, and in a moment, power seemed to draw together around his body as he faced Andromeda. _He hasn't forgiven her all the way yet, _Draco thought. _Either that, or he doesn't trust her as much as he used to. I wonder if she knows it? _"They're both the same degree of descent from the Black family. I didn't think it would matter."

Andromeda blinked. "I didn't mean that. I just wondered if you didn't want to leave it to someone else."

"Who else do I have?" Potter sounded as though he had worked hard to keep the bitterness out of his voice, although Draco didn't think he had succeeded completely. "I won't have children of my own. And this house needs to be appreciated and lived in by someone. I don't think I can ever appreciate it fully after what it did to Sirius."

"Is something sentient in the house?" Draco asked, concerned at once. He didn't want Scorpius inheriting a haunted place, one that would damage him. There were strange tales about some of the older houses that hadn't been inhabited by direct heirs in a while.

"Nothing like that," Potter said. "Merely that Sirius was trapped here, and I think it drove him crazy and contributed to his death." He looked at Draco, and Draco was amused to note that some of the sense of waiting power faded. He trusted Draco more than Andromeda, then. In a way. It was terribly amusing. "I can't live in this place."

"But you can clean it, and promise it to people who will," said Draco, studying Potter. "That's generous of you."

Potter shrugged, turning one shoulder as though that was the shield he would bounce compliments off. "It's no big deal. Let's go see what they've found." Then he paused and stopped in mid-step. "Hopefully before—"

A shriek rang out, and Draco jumped. Potter sighed. "That happens," he added, and hurried out into a corridor. Draco and Andromeda followed.

Scorpius and Teddy were standing in front of a portrait on the wall, their mouths open. Scorpius's fingers were in his ears. Teddy was making faces and changing his hair back and forth from violent red to orange, probably to make fun of the woman who was shrieking at them. Draco knew at a glance that she was a Black, but not who she was. His mother's training had extended to learning the names of his ancestors, not their faces.

"This is Walburga Black," Potter said, somehow managing to make himself heard through the awful shrieks, and he lifted his wand. A second later, a thick curtain, like the ones that the boys must have pulled aside, hung in front of the picture.

She stopped screaming. Potter rolled his eyes and turned to Teddy. "You don't need to taunt her like that, Teddy."

"She called me a nasty name and wouldn't stop screaming."

Teddy sounded totally unrepentant. Draco smiled unwillingly, and hoped he could hide his smile from Scorpius. It wouldn't be good if his son, who already had his own troubles, started picking up naughty things to do from Teddy.

But Scorpius was just standing there with his hands over his ears. He gradually lowered them and asked Draco, "Daddy, what relation is she to us?"

Draco had to pause a moment to work it out from what he remembered of the Black family tree. Andromeda, who must have remembered, stood there and let him do it. Perhaps she had no reason to memorialize the relationship to Walburga Black in his head.

"She's my great-aunt," Draco said at last, "and your great-great-aunt."

Scorpius made a sound somewhere between a choke and a chuckle, and reached out to Andromeda. "I like _my _great-aunt," he said. "Sorry, Daddy."

Andromeda looked down at Scorpius with a fond smile. "I promise that I'll never sound as awful as that, Scorpius. No matter what you did."

"And neither will I," Draco added, because he had the feeling Scorpius expected him to, even though he wasn't looking in Draco's direction. Or maybe Potter expected him to.

Scorpius shivered, and then said, "Let's explore the rest of the house!" and ran up the nearest staircase. Teddy followed, changing his hair to a silvery-blond that most nearly matched Draco's mother's. Draco watched them go and thought about how they looked like brothers instead of cousins.

"Why did you leave that awful portrait up?" he asked, turning to Potter. "I would think you'd get rid of it."

Potter shrugged again, looking nearly as awkward as he had during the actual Floo conversation. "I wanted to. But Kreacher is rather devoted to her, and it's—well, it's hard to get rid of a portrait with a Permanent Sticking Charm on the back. I'll figure out a way to do it now that I know Teddy and Scorpius will be inheriting the house. But I hadn't lived here in years. No reason to."

Andromeda turned and slipped down a side corridor. Draco wondered if she was investigating some room she remembered from her childhood, but didn't follow. "This place looks dingy and dusty," he said.

Potter gave him one of those looks that made Draco think he was remembering their schoolboy rivalry all over again. "Kreacher didn't have much time to clean."

"I'm not disappointed in you, I'm disappointed in my ancestors," Draco said, and stared up at the ceiling. Layers of dust and disintegrating wallpaper clung there still, although he could see where more had been removed. "Why did they let the house get _like _this?"

Potter shrugged, and seemed calm again. "Sirius was in prison for years, and he was the last heir to the house. His mum—Walburga—died sometime in the eighties, I think. And when he was here, he didn't have much motivation to keep it up."

"The house-elf should have," Draco said, despite thinking it might provoke a tirade worthy of Granger.

"Kreacher was depressed, and didn't want to serve Sirius, and mostly wanted to be dead and have his head chopped off so it could be put on the wall like all the other house-elf heads." Potter grimaced as he said that.

"_What_," Draco said. He had thought it would be the start of a question, but he had to end it there.

Potter gave him a grim little smile. "I took down the heads before you came, of course. I thought it might upset the kids."

"It upsets me," Draco said. No Malfoy house-elf had actually died during his lifetime, but he knew from past discussion that Lucius would have them buried in the back garden, rather like the Kneazle Draco had once owned that died as a kitten. House-elves weren't all that important, but they weren't trophies to be displayed. "Knowing my ancestors were people like that."

"If it helps," Potter said, and he drew a little away from Draco and walked up the corridor in front of him, "you aren't much like that."

Draco chuckled, and Potter glanced back at him, eyes like a deer's. "I know why you think I might fly into a rage," sad Draco, "but I won't. I am trying to be better about the Malfoy side of my ancestry and not shoving it down Scorpius's throat, and I never knew the Blacks. I don't mind disparaging comments about them."

"I don't even want to be disparaging." Potter's voice was soft, and he looked around at the ceilings and walls as if seeing through them. "I feel sorry for them. But at the same time, they were awful people, and tormented Sirius, and…when he died, I felt as though I'd lost the chance for a family." Abruptly, he shook his head. "Until I found my friends and Andromeda and Teddy, of course."

Draco said nothing, but followed him deeper into the house, founding nothing so worthy of observation as Potter himself.

How deep did that longing for a family run? How many times had he thought he'd built one up and then lost it? No wonder Andromeda's comment had hurt him.

Draco felt as though he was being invited into a corner of Potter's soul, rather like Draco had invited Potter into his own family secrets.

He felt…rather honored, in fact.


	28. Perils of Business

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Twenty-Eight—Perils of Business_

"Hello? Excuse me? Are you the one who's trying to set up a business to help people like me?"

Harry turned towards the door of his new little office, which was squeezed into a corner of Diagon Alley between Madam Malkin's and a shuttered bookshop that hadn't been able to compete with Flourish and Blotts, and smiled at the witch who stood in the doorway. "Yes. I'm Harry Potter. What's your name?"

The thin blond woman came into the room twisting her hands around each other. "I'm Mathilda Patience. I've been taking care of my nephew for months now. His name's Ivor, you know. Ivor Patience."

Harry nodded understanding and gestured towards the chairs crowded in front of his desk. He had at least made sure the desk was nice, brought from Grimmauld Place, and the paperwork the Ministry had insisted he go through when starting up the business was now neatly tucked into drawers and out of sight. "Why don't you sit down, and tell me what sort of problems you've been having with Ivor?"

Mathilda sat. She had stopped wringing her hands, but she still looked haggard—almost the way Andromeda had looked when she was afraid for Teddy's sanity, Harry thought. Harry sat down across from her and tried to look like a cross between professional and cheerful.

"Ivor's four," Mathilda whispered, looking at the floor. "He can't sleep through the night. Death Eaters—they took away his parents in front of him. They didn't find Ivor only because he was lying under the blankets and too terrified to make a noise. He didn't see them die, but he's scarred."

Harry swallowed. Sometimes he was grateful that he hadn't been old enough to remember more than he did of his mother's death. What he _did _have was horrific enough. "That makes sense," he said, and pulled out a parchment to take notes. "Does he sleep in the same room with you?"

Mathilda nodded and leaned her forehead on her hand. "And he screams and screams and screams, and I know I should take him to a Mind-Healer, but I can't _afford _one. I have to work all the time to support myself, and now Ivor. I've taken a second job at the Ministry—transcribing these criminal trials in front of the Wizengamot." Her voice came out in jerks and starts. "I can't work well if I don't get to sleep, and he screams every night. He won't eat, sometimes. He's too young to be on Dreamless Sleep Potion. I don't know what to do."

Harry thought about it, and knew that Mathilda was watching him despairingly through her fringe. He knew he wouldn't do everything perfectly the first time, but he wanted to get this one right, and not just for the sake of what Mathilda might say about him if he didn't. He wanted to help Ivor.

"The way I see it, there are two possible solutions," he said, and looked at Mathilda. "You need to tell me which one would work better."

"Anything," Mathilda interrupted, her voice fervent. "I haven't had _options_ in months. I'll try anything. Ivor's with a co-worker of mine right now, asleep, but soon he'll wake up and start screaming."

"I can give you the money to take Ivor to a Mind-Healer, and get him all the treatment he'll need," said Harry. "Or I can try to help him. I'm not an expert yet. You're my first client. There's the chance I could hurt him—"

"I think you would do a perfect job," said Mathilda, dry and sharp. "But—I don't understand. I thought I would pay you to take care of Ivor, or whatever it is that you do. But you're going to give me money to go to a Mind-Healer? Is this a charity?" She lifted her head and looked around the room as though she expected shame to sprout from the walls.

"Not a charity," Harry said calmly. "I'll accept payment in kind. You may have read I got divorced a few years ago?" Mathilda blinked at him and nodded. "It's hard for me to date and find someone who really sees the real me, who wants to have children with me—who I would trust to be a good mother. But I would like to spend time with children. So you can either 'pay' me by letting me spend time with Ivor, or you can tell other people about my business." He cocked his head as another solution occurred to him. "I can't do it yet, because the business is so new, but perhaps I could hire you as secretary when I'm busier. That way, you could have a single well-paid job. You could have flexible hours if that would let you take care of Ivor better. Would that help?"

Mathilda pressed one first into her eyes, which Harry saw were welling with tears. "You're _too _good," she whispered. "How am I ever going to repay you?"

"You can let me spend time with Ivor, for a beginning," Harry suggested, and tried not to sound too greedy.

Mathilda looked up and nodded. "Yes. Please. Let's try that before I take him to a Mind-Healer. He tends to scream when he goes new places. But you wouldn't mind coming and talking to him in my house?"

"Of course not," said Harry, and Mathilda reached across the desk and gripped his hand.

"Thank you."

Harry pressed her hand back, a little embarrassed by the gratitude on her face. Of course, he had known he would have to expect it, and at least this time, he was doing something he meant to do and that would have good consequences, unlike the way that he'd stumbled around while battling Voldemort. "Do you want to leave now?" he asked, and stood up. "I'll get my cloak."

* * *

Ivor Patience was the most huddling child Harry had ever seen.

He was pale, like Mathilda, but other than that, Harry wouldn't have thought they were nephew and aunt. Ivor's hair was dark brown, his eyes black, and his fringe was wild and untamed. Mathilda shook her head when she saw where Harry was looking. "He won't let me cut it. He goes wild when I try to cast a Cutting Charm."

Harry nodded. Ivor was currently huddled into a corner behind the leg of Mathilda's bed. Harry sat down on the floor and drew his wand. Ivor promptly curled up harder.

And screamed.

The sound was as piercing as Mathilda had said it was, and as hard to listen to. Mathilda was standing with her hands fluttering around her ears and the expression of utter hopelessness she had worn when she walked into Harry's office coming back. Harry raised an eyebrow and said, "I'm not going to hurt you, Ivor." Then he aimed his wand at the wall and whispered, "_Umbrae tutelae_."

A shadow rose up against the wall, a shadow with nothing to cast it. Ivor turned to stare at it, his shrill scream still rising. Harry ignored it for the moment. He had heard worse things when he was an Auror, although they had usually inspired him to charge to the rescue.

This time, he was going to do the rescuing by sitting as still as he could, and creating the best spell he could.

He formed the shadow into the image of a unicorn. It was the single most unthreatening creature he could think of, and he doubted that Ivor could possibly associate it with Death Eaters. Sure enough, Ivor went silent when Harry managed to sculpt the silhouette of the horse-like head and the single horn on top of it, blinking.

"Do you know what these are?" Harry asked Ivor. He could still feel Mathilda hovering behind him, but she didn't interfere. That was the only good thing about the hopelessness she was suffering under, Harry thought, grim. It wouldn't let her interfere and spoil something Harry might be able to do.

Ivor gave him a wondering glance, and shook his head.

"They're guardian shadows," Harry said. It was the literal translation of the spell incantation, and he didn't think they needed a different name. He waved his wand, and a second unicorn shadow joined the first one. They began to gallop slowly and steadily around the room, flashing from wall to wall, crossing behind Ivor, who jumped and turned to look at them. "If anyone tries to come into your room and hurt you, they'll beat them up." He thought concepts like "stabbing" might be a bad idea to talk about. "They'll always protect you, if you want them."

Ivor sat there so long and looked so steadily at the unicorns that Harry began to wonder if he had done something wrong after all. Maybe the Death Eaters had given Ivor a hatred for violence. Maybe the shadows had reminded him about something else—his parents?—that Harry couldn't even begin to understand.

But then Ivor turned back towards Harry, and his face was small and fierce. "They'll keep me safe?" he demanded.

Harry half-relaxed. A child who still had that level of engagement with the outside world was in a less desperate situation than the one he'd first pictured when Mathilda was talking about Ivor. "Yes," he said. "They'll always stay." He added a few more spells as he spoke, to make sure that the unicorns would be permanent shadows.

Ivor subjected the unicorns to another stare, then shook his head. "They can't keep me safe from everything."

"I know," said Harry softly. "Nightmares creep up and attack you while you're asleep." Ivor whirled to face him as if he was surprised that Harry knew that. "But they can keep anyone from coming into your room."

Ivor shut his eyes and gave a violent shiver. Then he looked at the unicorns again. "I can't hear them galloping."

It took Harry a minute to work out the right combination of sounds to add to the auditory glamour spell he knew—Aurors were trained to create lots of sounds that might distract or dismay their foes, but not usually hoofbeats—but in the end, he thought the noise of footsteps pounding on the floor were close enough. "Like this?" he asked, and cast the spell on the unicorns.

Ivor stared as the unicorn shadows galloped around and around him, leaping when they got to the bed and briefly merging with the shadows of other things. "Yeah," he whispered. "Maybe I can sleep. They're neat."

Harry relaxed with a ragged little sigh, and glanced at Mathilda, who had come up behind him. "Can you sleep with that noise of the glamour?" he whispered.

"If I can go back to sleep after some of the nightmare visions that Ivor's told me he's had, I can sleep through anything." Mathilda shut her eyes for a second. "And you still want to come and play with Ivor?"

"If he wants me to," Harry said, and turned back to Ivor. "Would you want me to play with you sometimes, Ivor? Come here and visit? I could show you some of the other spells I know. Besides the unicorns," he added, and nodded again at the galloping shadows. Ivor fiddled with his sleeve for a second, eyes on Harry.

"Spells that would keep me safe?" he abruptly demanded.

"If you like." Harry wasn't surprised he had focused on that. If he had known about someone with magic like this when he was a child, he would have been most interested in the spells that could keep him safe first. Although what _he _would have wanted were spells that could keep him safe from Dudley.

Ivor looked at the walls again. His face was still, but his eyes burned furiously. Mathilda sat down on the bed and looked at her nephew with a tender frustration that Harry understood. He'd seen something like it in Malfoy's eyes when he looked at Scorpius, and sometimes Andromeda's with Teddy.

"I want you to come back," said Ivor. "Only not today."

He was studying the unicorns again, Harry realized. Maybe looking for weaknesses in them, maybe just getting used to them. Either way, Harry didn't think there was much else he could do for Ivor and Mathilda right now. He nodded and stood up. "All right. I'll see you then, Ivor."

Mathilda opened her mouth as if she was going to prod Ivor into saying goodbye to him, but Harry caught her eye and shook his head. Mathilda followed him out into the drawing room. "I think he might be better," she said. "Not right away, but you're the first stranger he's spoken to in months. And most of the time, he won't stop screaming until he falls down in exhaustion."

"I would still suggest taking him to a Mind-Healer," Harry told her. "For him to have nightmares that persistent and that strong, he really needs one since he can't have the potion yet."

Mathilda nodded. "If you wouldn't mind giving me some Galleons for it…Merlin." Abruptly, she covered her eyes and shuddered. "I was thinking I was such a horrible aunt," she whispered through her fingers, "because sometimes all I wanted him to do was _stop _so that I could go to sleep."

"I think everyone who's a parent has felt that," Harry replied, thinking of Malfoy's first desperate letters. He hadn't wanted his son to stop existing, but he had wanted him to stop doing what he was doing, definitely. "I'll leave the Galleons on the mantel." He put them gently down next to a delicate little porcelain bowl with blue tints.

"Thank you," said Mathilda when he turned around again. She caught his hand and looked him deeply in the eye. "I know I can't repay you yet, but I will. I swear it. If only by letting you spend time with Ivor. You're welcome whenever you want to come."

"For now, we'll leave that up to Ivor, I think," Harry said, although his heart swelled and he couldn't help smiling as he spoke, which he knew probably looked strange from the sideways glance Mathilda gave him. "I wouldn't want to intrude when he still needs time to get used to me. But thank you for the invitation."

Mathilda nodded, and waved goodbye as he stepped into the Floo to go back to his office. His heart was still warm, filling his chest with unexpected tendrils of good feeling, and he _did _think that he would be welcome back there eventually, as Ivor started to heal.

Only when he sat behind his desk did he start feeling a little heavy, a little empty. He thought he had done a good deed with Ivor, but he'd had to leave. Of course he had to, it was for the boy's own good, but it wasn't the same as staying with a child of his own would have been.

Harry sighed fiercely and bent over the Ministry-issued paperwork again. Yes, all right, so this was never going to be the same as having a family of his own. But this was just his first case. He would get used to it, in time. He wouldn't need to make up a fake family and a personality and life like he had with Ethan. And he was welcome to go over and hug Teddy whenever he wanted. Andromeda had written as much to him in a letter last night, pointedly leaving herself out of it.

The problem was…

Just as it had taken Harry years and years to accept that he could have the Weasleys as a family, even if he could never have parents, he thought it would take him years more to accept that he could enjoy these children, even if he could never have any of his own blood.

Much as he hated to take too much of Malfoy's advice, perhaps it _was _time to think about that Mind-Healer again.

* * *

"That's good, Scorpius," said Draco, and it was no trouble to keep his voice gentle and proud. Scorpius was writing his name better than he had done it before Astoria left. He'd already copied the whole passage that Draco had assigned him out of _The_ _Tales of Beedle the Bard. _That was after reading it with plenty of attention and seeming to understand everything he read.

Scorpius glanced up at him and then went back to writing. The quill still got clutched in his fist as though it was trying to run away. But that was all right, Draco thought, lounging back in his chair and watching Scorpius with a quiet glow under his breastbone. Scorpius was learning skills that would stand him in good stead, and of course skills like that needed practice.

"Can I have a reward if I finish this without mistakes?" Scorpius asked, a sentence or two later. He and Draco were sitting at the table in the library, and Draco had taken a book from the shelf behind him. It was a slim folio of simplified wizarding history, and he wanted to read it before he gave it to Scorpius, just to make sure it didn't contain anything inappropriate for him.

"Do you want an extra biscuit with lunch?" Draco asked, amused. "Or that cake you like so much? I can ask Izzy to make it."

"No," said Scorpius. He said it slowly, so focused on the words in front of him that Draco thought he wouldn't ask again until he finished the sentence. But he must have been closer to the end than Draco thought, because he pressed down a firm period and glanced up through his fringe, blinking innocently. "I want Uncle Harry to come over."

"You just saw him the other day," Draco said. It _had _been three days since they were at Grimmauld Place, but he was a little startled. Scorpius had always seemed to accept most of his adult visitors as they dropped in and out, except his grandparents, who he usually asked to visit. He never seemed upset if Blaise took a few weeks between visits, and of course he was used to his mother's erratic schedule by now.

Then Draco thought of the way Scorpius had reacted to the divorce, the problem he had asked Potter for help with in the first place, and winced. _Maybe he cares more about it than I thought he did._

"Yes, but I want to see him again," said Scorpius, and his voice was oddly stilted. After a second, Draco realized he was imitating the tone that Draco used when he explained a rule to Scorpius. He was trying to sound absolutely calm and mature. "That's why I said it would be a reward. I want it."

Draco studied him, then gave a small shrug. Potter had said something about starting his business soon when they were at Grimmauld Place. "He might be too busy with his new job. But I'll Floo him and ask him."

"Good," said Scorpius, and went back to writing the next sentence. "It doesn't have to be today." Draco bit his lip to avoid showing his amusement at that imperious little claim. "But I would like to see him soon."

He sounded so adult, so _Malfoy_. Draco kept his twitching hand at his side; Scorpius didn't always like his hair ruffled. "All right. I'll ask him." He waited until Scorpius nodded again before getting up and crossing the room, where he Flooed Andromeda. He didn't know the exact address of Potter's house, since he'd never contacted him there, but she could tell him.

Andromeda, though, gave a small shake of her head the instant Draco mentioned Potter. "Harry is in Diagon Alley today. It's his first day at the office." She gave Draco an intent stare that promised havoc if Draco did something to interrupt Potter.

"Could I know the Floo address of _that _office?" Draco asked. "I could be a client."

Andromeda's gaze grew heavier, sharper. "You know that you aren't," she said. "Not in the traditional way. I want you to leave him alone and let him be his own person."

Draco settled back. "Are you jealous?" he asked, picking up the faint thread of odd emotion in the back of his voice. "I'm not going to take him away from you any more than I'll take you away from him. I just want to see him, because Scorpius asked if he could see him and show off his writing to him." It was a good guess, he thought, as to why Scorpius wanted to see Potter now, although Scorpius hadn't said it.

Andromeda's eyes narrowed as if sensing the small lie. "Go back to your son, Draco. At some point, _you _have to stand on your own, too."

She flicked away from the fireplace, leaving Draco staring with his mouth slightly open. Then he shook his head. He could understand, a little. Andromeda seemed to think that Draco wanted to fuck with Potter when it came to his business, although nothing was further from the truth. Maybe she thought their old rivalry was rearing its head again.

Draco would have turned around to compose an owl, but the Floo flickered, showing someone else trying to contact him. Draco allowed it. It might be Blaise, and Blaise's visit might go some way to making up for Scorpius's disappointment.

Instead, Potter's face appeared in the flames. Draco blinked, hard, and kept from laughing because it would sound hysterical. But he managed to nod and ask, "Potter, did you need something?"

"_Uncle Harry!_" Scorpius leaped up from the table and ran across the library. "Look at the writing I did!" He waved the parchment at the fire, and Draco moved a little, ready to keep it from flying into the flames if he had to. Luckily, Scorpius didn't shake it that hard.

Potter smiled. "That's wonderfully written," he said, and Scorpius glowed as though he was sucking up life and energy from Potter's praise. But Potter turned back to Draco. "You know—you said something to me that made me think. When we were in Godric's Hollow."

"Yes?" Draco asked encouragingly. He hardly thought Potter was going to mention their fight in front of Scorpius, but he couldn't remember what else he'd said that would need exploration now. Still, he found that he wanted to know what Potter would say, whether or not it was immediately relevant.

"Something about—needing help." Potter sighed. "I think you're right. I need a Mind-Healer. But I have less than no idea about which ones are discreet, and could be trusted with—this problem. Would you have suggestions?"

Draco blinked, once, twice. There was a surge of delight in his heart that he imagined must make him look a lot like Scorpius, at least if it was showing on his face.

But he managed to nod in a dignified way, and say, "Why don't you come here, so we can talk about it?"

"See in you a minute, then, Malfoy." Potter pulled back and vanished from the fire.

Scorpius looked up at him. "Uncle Harry is coming to visit?"

"He is," said Draco, and put his hand on Scorpius's shoulder as his son whooped and danced in place. He felt like doing much the same thing.

_And which of us is happier, and which should be? _


	29. Discretion

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Twenty-Nine—Discretion_

"You're sure about this."

Potter made it a statement, but it still sounded like a question to Draco. Draco merely nodded and glanced once more at the closed door that cut them off from entrance to Healer Brandeis's office. "Yes. Healer Brandeis is the most discreet _person _I know. She treated my mother."

Potter stared at him in surprise, and for once stopped bouncing his foot off the edge of the soft blue chair he was sitting on—a chair that was far more comfortable than Potter's bouncing would indicate. "What? I never knew your mother had needed a Mind-Healer."

"See?" Draco asked in triumph, and the door opened.

Healer Brandeis stepped out. Potter leaned forwards and studied her. Draco wondered what for. He couldn't possibly see her as a threat, even with Auror training. Perhaps she was simply smaller than he had expected.

Draco could understand that impulse. Healer Brandeis was a short woman, her soft brown head coming no higher than Draco's shoulder. She would probably be shorter compared to Potter. She had neat braids, the pale green robes that Mind-Healers tended to wear, pale skin, and blue eyes that surveyed Potter with a calm, bird-like curiosity.

"Thank you for coming, Mr. Potter." She stepped back and gestured into her office. "Would you like to come in?"

Potter nodded and stood up. He seemed more than startled when Draco stood up to walk with him. Draco raised an eyebrow at him. "I left Scorpius with his grandparents for the day. I'm surprised you think I would have needed that time simply to walk you to Healer Brandeis's office."

"I didn't…" Potter frowned and shook his head, then entered the office without speaking. Draco followed him. He did his best to tame his smile under Brandeis's scrutiny, but it was difficult.

No, he wasn't going to limit his contributions to Potter's Mind-Healing merely to recommending a Healer to him. There were other things Draco was eager to see go into effect.

Healer Brandeis's office had changed little from what Draco remembered. The walls were still wood paneling, unusual for St. Mungo's, but everything had been painted a soft blue. Streaks of white in the blue suggested clouds without actually forming their shapes. The interior was all one large space, instead of broken up with storage cupboards, tables, and chairs the way Draco had seen in a lot of Healers' offices. Healer Brandeis did have chairs, but they were distributed almost randomly, and all of them had wheels that ran easily over the thin rugs of gold and pale pink, colors that reminded Draco of a sunrise. Healer Brandeis had said they were a Muggle innovation when Draco asked about the wheels. Hesitation about what his father would say was the only thing that had kept Draco from adopting some of the chairs for himself.

Healer Brandeis sat down in the chair nearest the small fireplace, which was made of shiny blue stones streaked with white and gold. She leaned forwards and swept her hand at the other chairs. "Wherever you'll feel comfortable, Mr. Potter."

Potter hesitated one more time, and then took the chair furthest from her. Draco sat next to him, earning another odd look. He shrugged at Potter in response. _He _couldn't help it if Potter didn't understand all of Draco's purposes in coming here.

"Now." Healer Brandeis looked at Potter as if Draco had ceased to exist. Draco had felt the effect before when he accompanied his mother on visits, and didn't mind it. He was interested to see how Potter would react if he forgot that Draco was in the room. "What problem are you seeking help with?"

Potter blinked. "You don't just assume that it's the war?"

"Assumptions are a dangerous state of mind in my business." Healer Brandeis nodded as though keeping time to unheard music, eyes still fastened patiently, immovably, on Potter's face. "Which one is it?"

"A combination of Dark hexes that makes me unable to have children."

That did at least surprise Brandeis, and Draco saw Potter relax; keeping his secrecy was still important to him. Draco frowned, but said nothing. Potter would have to learn, _someday, _that secrecy wasn't the most important thing he could focus on.

But today, he had other things to learn. Healer Brandeis said, "I see. And this would be the cause of your recent divorce?"

"Three years ago, yes." Potter's tone took on a dryness Draco hadn't known it could have. Well, when Potter was around him, it almost always had emotion of _some _kind. "And in large part behind the new business I've started."

"Time doesn't mean as much to a Mind-Healer as it does to other people," said Brandeis, with a small shrug. "I spend so much of my days in minds that don't always track time the same way." She was studying Potter as if seeing tics and imperfections invisible to Draco. "There is no hope of reversal?"

Potter grimaced. "No. It was entirely accidental, and they don't even know what the combination was, only what it did. If it had hit in a different place on my body, it wouldn't even have had this effect."

Potter's voice now had a bitterness that was stunning. Draco didn't want to look away from him. He had never thought he'd _lost _something by having Potter as an enemy instead of a friend at Hogwarts, at least once he got over the sting to his pride that was Potter refusing his hand. But now he knew he'd at least lost the chance to see Potter express a full range of emotions.

"No hope of reversal," said Brandeis, and for the first time, waved her wand and Summoned the large silver bowl of water that Draco was familiar with from his visits here with his mother. It floated over to her without spilling a drop, and Brandeis leaned over and spoke the words into it, making the bowl glow briefly. She faced Potter. "My means of keeping notes," she explained, tilting her head at the water. "It works like a Pensieve, except that it only shows the words I speak into it, and only to me."

"All right," said Potter, and he sighed and lifted a shaky hand to rake his fingers through his hair. "I don't-I don't want to go on like this. I can have a successful business and I can spend time around other children, but I realized that I still felt desperate even after I'd helped a little boy who had nightmares and I should have been feeling pleased with myself, and successful. It's like I'll never be satisfied until I have a blood child of my own."

"If that is impossible," Brandeis said, bending over the water and watching Potter with all the keenness of a predator, "explain your goal in coming to me."

"I want to accept not being able to have children," said Potter. "Maybe you can convince me. _I _can think of all the things I could do instead, but it's not going to matter when there's no other voice speaking to convince me."

Draco locked his hands on his knee to keep from responding that _he _could have provided that voice, if Potter had only come to him. What was he but someone who was the opposite of Potter in so many ways?

On the other hand, Potter had come to him for advice about the Mind-Healer. Perhaps that was enough of an honor.

"Very well," said Brandeis, and smiled at Potter. "It's good to have a concrete goal. We'll begin with simple narrative today, where you explain to me what you want to tell of your injury and the circumstances that led up to your divorce, and I make a few suggestions that might have immediate effect." For the first time, she looked at Draco, and her look was gently inquiring. "Do you want Mr. Malfoy to stay while you're speaking?"

Potter blinked and turned around. Draco told himself not to be insulted that Potter had basically forgotten he was there. It might be a sign of trust.

"Oh," Potter said, and then shrugged. "I trust him not to use it against me. He can stay."

It wasn't a ringing endorsement, but it was more than Draco had thought he would get. He leaned back against the chair and listened as Potter began to explain the circumstances three years ago to Brandeis. He noticed that, as yet, Potter had mentioned nothing about Ethan Starfall. Perhaps he simply wanted to wait and see if he could trust Brandeis.

Either way, it meant Draco held one secret of Potter's that no one else did.

It was strange, how important that was to him. And enlightening.

* * *

Harry sighed and sipped at the glass of water Healer Brandeis had given him. It seemed as though telling his story had taken hours, although when he glanced at the clock on the wall, barely thirty minutes seemed to have passed. His voice was probably more hoarse from emotion than use, he decided.

Healer Brandeis had leaned back halfway through the story, and other than murmuring words to her recording bowl now and then, she hadn't paid attention to anything except him. Her eyes were wide and thoughtful.

"How angry are you at your ex-wife now?" she asked.

"Angrier than I thought I was," Harry said tiredly. He wouldn't have been able to admit this a few weeks ago, but then, a few weeks ago all this...mess hadn't happened and he hadn't even considered going to a Mind-Healer. "She's pregnant, and I'm more jealous of her than I can say for having a baby, a blood child of her own." He shut his eyes, and tried not to envision a beaming, pregnant Ginny, who he hadn't actually seen anyway. "And sometimes I wonder if I was wrong. Maybe I could have accepted one of her children as my own. I'll never know now, it's too late, but I wonder."

"How can you _think_-"

That came from Malfoy, astonishingly, and not Healer Brandeis. Harry opened one eye to look at Malfoy in slight shock, then shrugged and said, "Because it's a situation where I have to. Everyone behaved badly. I knew where I assigned the blame at the time, but now that I'm more distant from it, how can I _not _wonder?"

Malfoy pinched his lips together and shifted in the chair. Harry thought about telling him that maybe _he_ needed to see a Mind-Healer about his own divorce from Astoria, but he didn't say it because he wasn't suicidal.

"It's mature of you to be able to see that your ex-wife isn't entirely to blame, Mr. Potter," said Brandeis, drawing Harry's attention back to her. "But we must make sure that you nurture no fantasies of getting back together with her. That could impede your own progress in reconciliation to your fate."

"I don't," Harry said shortly. "She's happy with her new husband, and I'm envious of their happiness, but there's no way I want to destroy it or convince her to give it up."

Brandeis watched him for a moment as if considering the truth of his words, then nodded and tapped her wand on the rim of her recording bowl. That caused a ringing sound that seemed to travel much further than Harry had expected it to, and then a twisting tower of light and color, intertwined threads, rose from the water. Harry tilted his head back so he could watch it.

"This is the sort of tower that your words form," Brandeis explained. "The colors represent different ideas, the brightness of the light how emphatically you spoke of them." She touched her wand to one long red strand and it vibrated, and Harry heard a ghost of his voice speaking Ginny's name. "In general, I'm satisfied that your hatred towards your ex-wife is only resentment now, and will not get in the way."

She touched her wand to a long blue strand that seemed to spiral up and down most of the tower. "But this. Your longing for _blood _family. This is still alive and impeding you dreadfully."

Harry nodded slowly. He reckoned that was still the source of it all, all the hurt and all the dread. "Yes, I know. If-if that hadn't been there, I could have reconciled with Ginny and her notion of having children with someone else after all."

Malfoy stirred, frowning, but didn't say anything. Harry was still trying to work out why he cared when Harry talked about impossible situations. After all, this situation was the best for _him_. If Harry had stayed with Ginny and her children, then Harry wouldn't have been Ethan for a while, wouldn't have been available to help Malfoy, and wouldn't have got to know Scorpius or played with him or be leaving him Grimmauld Place along with Teddy.

"Or you could have found pleasure in your godson and your friends' children," said Brandeis, with a small frown at him, and Harry wondered what he'd done wrong. Perhaps she thought his resentment against Ginny _would _become an impediment if he kept talking about it. Brandeis added, "Why do you have such an attachment to the idea of blood family?"

Harry took a deep breath. This was going to be somewhat embarrassing. "My parents dying when I was young meant I idolized them. I never knew what they were like, but I kept imagining...something great. So I thought if I couldn't be with them, I would at least have children of my own. And I could take them on holidays and teach them Quidditch and get them practice wands and all the things that my parents never got a chance to do with me."

Shit, his eyes were stinging. Harry closed his eyes, with the silent promise to Malfoy that he would hex him if Malfoy teased him about this. "But then I realized I wouldn't get to do that, either, and it was like this double blow. I couldn't get over it. I still don't think I have. I know it's impossible, as impossible as it is for my parents to come back to life, but I never stopped wanting them, and I don't know if I can ever stop wanting blood children."

There was profound silence for a moment, without even a shift from Malfoy to show he was bored and impatient. Harry still had to wonder why he was here at all, but he did acknowledge that Malfoy was being awfully polite about all the silliness Harry was feeling.

"Forgive me, Mr. Potter," Healer Brandeis began, sounding as careful as though she was circling around armed trip spells on the floor. "But I was under the impression that you grew up with blood family. If you did, why couldn't they ease your loneliness? If you didn't, why did they not manage to ease you past this focus on blood?"

_Fuck, this part. Of course, this part. _Harry stared at his hands, which was easier, even when he regarded the scarred knuckles and chewed fingernails and other things that made them ugly, than looking at a face right now.

"My blood family was my Muggle aunt, my mother's sister, and my cousin," he said. "And my Uncle Vernon lived with them, of course."

Silence, silence that Healer Brandeis seemed to know better than to break. Malfoy was over on the couch breathing like one of the dragons he was named for, but he didn't break it, either. Harry braced himself. He hoped Malfoy was going to be gratified by this, because _someone _should be.

"They didn't like me. They didn't like magic. They didn't like-lots of things. Anything strange, or weird, or freakish." Speaking the word hurt less than he'd thought it would, like peeling a scab off an old wound. "There was a lot of the time when I dreamed about my parents coming back to life or about them having some sort of secret life where they were heroes because I wanted to be away from that life so badly, where I was just the unwanted freak."

"It must have helped to learn that your parents were heroes, after all," said Brandeis, very softly.

Harry looked up at her and shrugged. "Yes, it did. At the time. I knew they loved me enough to die for me. But I still wished they were alive more than I wished I'd known that. And I didn't think that much about it when I was eleven, even. I was dealing with knowing about magic for the first time and being the Boy-Who-Lived."

Malfoy was as stiff as a lamppost in his seat. Brandeis peered at him and asked, "You never knew before that?"

Harry shook his head. "I knew strange things happened around me, but not why. I knew they thought I was a freak, but not why."

"Tell me what else happened, Mr. Potter." Brandeis considered him for a long moment more, as though measuring his resistance to the idea, and then added gently, "Please."

That was more than Harry could resist. He dipped his head and murmured, "I slept in a cupboard. I had a bedroom, but only after I received the Hogwarts letter and they thought someone might report I wasn't _normal_. I didn't get birthday presents, or get to go along when they went out, usually. There was-there were a lot of bad times."

"Define them, please."

Harry rolled his shoulders, wondering why talking with a stranger about this was so much more comfortable than it would have been talking about it with Ron or Hermione. He reckoned that it was because Brandeis would use the information to help him recover, rather than not being able to do anything with it except hug him. "I did a lot of chores and I didn't get much to eat."

Simple words to hide a lot of sins, probably. But Harry didn't think he could say it any other way.

"I see," said Brandeis. She was giving him a deep look, somewhere between compassion and thoughtfulness, and rapping her wand over and over again on the rim of the bowl. The tower of light had dissipated, folding back into the water, and Harry stared at her face through the air where it had been. "And this continued all the time that you lived with your blood family?"

Harry nodded. "Well, until the time I went to Hogwarts. Then it was only the summers." He supposed he could have pretended that it had stopped when he was eleven, and neither Brandeis nor Malfoy would have known the difference, but the point was _supposed _to be getting better. That wouldn't happen if he hid the truth and pretended that everything had been fine when it wasn't.

Malfoy seemed off in some private world of his own. Brandeis leaned back with one hand on the rim of the bowl as though holding it in place, or clasping the magic to the place she had tapped it, and asked, "And you never told anyone?"

Harry shrugged. "My friends suspected it." They had, from the bars on the window and some things they had said to him since, but... "No, I didn't tell any adults. I eventually knew that I had to stay there because of the blood protection my mother had granted me, and before that, it just didn't come up or seem possible. I stayed at Hogwarts for all the holidays, though."

Brandeis remained sitting in silent patience for some time, but Harry had told her all he had to say. She finally nodded back at him, as if acknowledging the end of a conversation, and murmured, "It seems as though your blood family did indeed drive you back into embrace of your parents' memories, although you couldn't remember them well. I understand your problems better now. Have you had any contact with your family since the war?"

Harry lifted his head. "With respect, madam, I don't think of them as my family."

"That also is important." Brandeis tapped her wand on the dish again. "But have you?"

Harry shook his head. "I wasn't on bad terms with my cousin at the end. But my uncle and aunt never apologized, and I don't really want to see them again."

"Understandable." Brandeis smiled at him, and leaned her head on her fist. "Well, for the next week, I'd like you to practice a spell that I'll show you. It works to dull some emotions, to stop them from being like knives that dig into you. You may use the spell on whatever emotion you want to, eventually, but for the moment, it'll work on whichever one is strongest. That'll probably be your grief over not being able to have blood children."

"I don't want to just _give up _those emotions," Harry objected. That was what it sounded like, to him. "That's why I said I want to be reconciled to it and not just-just delete it out of my memory or something."

"I understand your reasoning, but for the moment, I think that reasoning is clouded and distorted by the presence of your grief," said Brandeis firmly. "It will be better when you can see more clearly, which you'll be able to when some of it is gone out of your head."

Harry considered that, then nodded reluctantly. He couldn't fault the logic, although it wasn't the way he would have chosen to go about things. But then, there was a reason that Healer Brandeis was a Mind-Healer and he wasn't. "What's the spell?"

The wand movement and incantation turned out to be simple enough, and Healer Brandeis stood up afterwards and came over to shake his hand. "I hope that you'll see me next Tuesday, Mr. Potter, at one? You can come sooner than that if you need to, on Friday. I had someone decide the other day that he doesn't want appointments with me anymore."

Harry smiled a little. He could see why someone might decide that. She _was _brusque. "Tuesday will be fine."

Healer Brandeis held his hand still for a moment, searching his eyes. "I believe we _can _get you past this," she said softly. "It will just take work."

"I'm not afraid of work," Harry told her, and she nodded as if satisfied, before they separated and Harry stepped out with Malfoy right behind him. He took a deep breath. Talking about that had been painful, but he did feel better now, as if he'd unstrapped a heavy rock from his shoulders.

Before he could decide whether to Apparate back home or to his office, Malfoy stepped up beside him. Harry blinked and glanced at him. Malfoy's face was pale, his jaw set.

"Come home with me," he said.

Harry considered it, but he thought he needed time alone. "I appreciate the invitation, but I need to-"

"It's not an invitation," Malfoy demanded. "And it's not because I need you, or because Scorpius needs you. I _have _to talk to you."

Harry considered Malfoy with careful eyes, because that sounded like a contradiction. Why would Malfoy have to talk to Harry if he didn't need help? But in the end, Harry found nothing that alarmed him, only surprised him, and he shrugged. "All right."

Malfoy spun on one heel and stalked away. Harry followed, studying his back and wondering what the hell this was all about.

_Does it bother him that much to have his old views about me contradicted? Why, I wonder?_


	30. A Strange Kind of Conversation

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Thirty-A Strange Kind of Conversation_

"Please come in. Please sit down."

_Does he know how much he sounds like a house-elf? _But Harry concealed his amusement as he sat on the couch in front of Malfoy. He could guess that Malfoy wouldn't find it amusing, and he really didn't want to deliberately piss off someone who was trying to be nice to him-who had sat all the way through that long confession Harry had made to Healer Brandeis without indicating how boring he must have found it.

"Do you want tea?" Malfoy asked abruptly, perching on a couch across from Harry. Harry took a moment to look around before he answered. They were in a room in a part of the Manor he hadn't visited before, and it was brightly-colored, more than Harry would have thought Malfoys would admire. The walls were blue with pale accents, and the couches were blue, and the floor was deep blue tile. Harry admired it as he answered.

"Yes, please. With lemon."

Malfoy gave him a narrow glance as he waved his hand and a house-elf appeared. "You didn't ask for that before."

Harry shrugged. "It puts the house-elves out a little, and I didn't want to do that, as a guest."

"Hmmm." Malfoy didn't take his eyes off him as he gave the orders for the tea to the house-elf, Izzy. Harry stared blandly back, even though his stomach was doing slow somersaults as he realized something.

This was the first time they had been alone in Malfoy's house without Scorpius. Before that, they had had conversations that mostly centered around Teddy or Scorpius. And when Malfoy had confronted him near the ruins in Godric's Hollow, and when he had done the same thing in the alley near the Ministry, they had almost immediately engaged in violence.

It didn't give Harry high hopes about how _this _encounter was going to go, especially because Malfoy didn't seem to have any idea of what he wanted to say.

Izzy came back with the tea, and they both sipped in silence. Harry sighed when he saw the way Malfoy glanced at him and then away. It seemed that once again he was going to have to be the one to take the wolf by the ears and speak the first thanks. Well, it wasn't going to be as dreadful as all _that_.

"Thanks for listening without saying much," he said quietly. "I know it had to be strange when seen from your perspective, but thanks."

Malfoy glanced back at him. "What do you mean, strange from my perspective?" At least his voice was slow and he held the teacup in his right hand, which would make it hard for him to reach for his wand. Harry still set down his own cup on a table of ornately carved wood next to the couch so as to have his own hands free.

"I mean, that you believed different things about me in school, and it must be a shock to hear they were wrong."

Malfoy hesitated as if he was turning those words over in his head and comparing them with words that _did _come from his own perspective. Then he nodded sharply. "I never knew that you lived with abusive Muggle relatives, for one thing. I have to think back and think about how that changes some things I had...misinterpreted."

"Yeah," said Harry, and rubbed the back of his neck. "But I was just going to say, I trust your discretion. You're not going to spread what you heard around." He left unsaid the reason he was sure of that: Harry would know exactly who had told, and his vengeance would be swift. "So if you wanted to tell me that, you don't need to. I already knew it."

Malfoy's face went more mask-like than ever, and he stared into his cup. "And if I invited you here to say something else?"

"Then I don't know what it is." Harry settled more solidly on the couch. He had been _sure _that Malfoy had been hesitating because he had to say something that would make him uncomfortable. Hell, Harry was uncomfortable enough with the mention of trust between them. Malfoy was probably caught in a delicate state where he wanted to insist he was trustworthy and yet knew there had been times in the recent past where Harry would have insisted otherwise.

"What is it?" Harry added, when Malfoy went on looking into the surface of his tea as though it was the most fascinating thing in the world.

Malfoy copied his actions of placing his teacup on the table next to him. When he turned back, Harry tensed again. There was a ferocious spark in Malfoy's eyes that made Harry half-expect a lunge off the couch after all.

But he had no idea what he could have done to piss off Malfoy this time, and he decided that he would ask the question before Malfoy could explode. "Why are you angry?"

"I'm angry _for _you."

"Huh?" Harry spent a moment reviewing what Healer Brandeis had said to him, trying to imagine how anything had been inappropriate, especially when Malfoy had been the one to recommend that particular Mind-Healer to him in the first place. Then he abruptly realized what Malfoy must mean.

His muscles tightened so fast that it made his stomach ache. He held up a hand. "You don't-you don't need to say anything about the Dursleys, Malfoy."

"But I'm going to." Malfoy tapped his fingers on the couch arm in a pattern that would have seemed nervous to anyone who couldn't see his eyes. "I never realized how awful they were to you. How deep the roots of your longing for a family go. And it makes perfect sense now that losing the ability to have children would have devastated you enough to create Ethan Starfall."

"That didn't give me the right to pretend to be someone else and write to you in a false persona," Harry said. Merlin, he wasn't sure the truce between them could survive Malfoy's pity. "You can understand what I did without liking it."

"Or being angry for you?" Malfoy gave him a thin smile that was more familiar. "I think that's what you were also about to say, wasn't it? You don't want me to feel it."

"You're not-" said Harry, and this time he was the one who was left without knowing what he wanted to say, while Malfoy watched him with the smug air of a cat. "You're not someone who has to be angry about it," Harry said at last, slowly. "I would expect that from Ron or Hermione, and it's Healer Brandeis's _job_. But it's not yours."

"You would expect it from a friend." Malfoy's voice was flat. "What do you think we are?"

"I don't _know_." Harry didn't want to insult Malfoy by saying they weren't friends, even though part of him thought it was true. "We have a truce so that I can mentor your son and you can be part of Teddy's life," Harry finally said, a little desperately. "And we get along well enough when we're talking about the children. But this isn't them."

"It's connected to them."

"It's also connected to things that happened long before I came to Hogwarts," Harry snapped. "I don't compare you with Dudley in my head anymore. I don't think that you're responsible for my state of mind. The way I created Ethan and involved you was _my _fault. What the Dursleys did was _their _fault. You don't need to be involved."

"Why do you think I accompanied you there, and stayed and listened?" Malfoy asked.

"I don't know."

"Because I want to be someone who has the right to be angry." Malfoy once again had the access to the smooth store of the words, while Harry stared at him and spluttered. It wasn't a power reversal that Harry approved of. "It might take a while longer before you're comfortable with that notion. But I am, already."

"Okay," Harry said, and found he had to repeat the word before he could come out with anything else. "Okay."

Malfoy sat back, lounged really, and watched him with those inscrutable silver eyes. He had already picked up his teacup again, and looked perfectly calm now that his statement was out. Harry felt the swell of something like a bubble of anger in his chest, and locked his teeth on a retort that would have set everything back.

"But you didn't come into Healer Brandeis's office expecting to hear what you heard," he said, choosing that for his return to the attack.

"Of course not," said Malfoy. "I had some idea about some of it beforehand, but not nearly all."

The look he was giving Harry was almost condescending. Harry didn't like it, and he didn't care if it was only there because they had only recently tried to be something else to each other. It was still annoying. "Then why did you stay and listen to what I said, if it wasn't-if you weren't looking for something to be angry about?"

Malfoy set the teacup down again. _Ha, _Harry thought. He had won a kind of victory, and he would cling to that in default of another more definite.

"The nature of the connection between us is strange," Malfoy began. "I haven't felt anything like it before." He gave Harry a very direct stare. "And if you have, then I think you would know how to go about it better."

Harry nodded unwillingly. "But that connection is based on chance and coincidence," he said. "It was just chance that your owl came to me. Just chance that you found out about Ethan. Just coincidence that Teddy got sick, and I went to you instead of invoking the life-debt that your mother owes me."

"You think that somehow lessens the emotions we feel because of it?" And now Malfoy looked _amused, _the bastard. "That didn't seem to be the case with, for example, the way you reacted when I confronted you in Godric's Hollow."

"I mean that it has to matter less than if I'd been honest and confessed to you about Ethan on my own." Harry pushed his glasses up his nose, and noticed that both his face and his fingers were sweaty. _Wonderful. _He was being pulled back into feeling strong emotions just by talking about them. "I didn't go to you about Teddy because we were already friends, and you didn't come to me for advice about Scorpius. If-there has to be something more between us than just these things that happened to happen."

"I wouldn't have listened if one of my friends had tried to give me advice about Scorpius," Malfoy said promptly. "Merlin knows they'd tried often enough. And the same with my parents. I'm glad I found out about Ethan on my own rather than as part of a general confession, because that means I'm the only one you share the secret with." He picked up his tea and sipped it.

"And Teddy?" Harry asked, because that was the one point he had raised that Malfoy didn't seem to have an answer to.

"You reached out to me based on the Black blood relationship, but also probably because you know I wouldn't raise tiresome objections about the use of blood in a potion." Malfoy gave him a smile that was thin enough to look as though someone had carved it on his face with a razor. "Right?"

Harry sighed and settled back against the couch. "Right."

"If those things are the result of chance and coincidence, then the chances and coincidences happened a long time ago." Malfoy leaned forwards, holding the teacup in his lap, and went on the attack. "Why don't you spend some time telling me why _you're _so desperate to deny any sort of connection existing between us, instead of requiring me to answer why it's perfectly natural."

Harry looked away. "Because I don't _understand _it," he said. "I really don't think this can turn into the kind of friendship I have with Ron and Hermione."

He thought he saw Malfoy shudder out of the corner of his eye, and turned around to glare at him, but Malfoy had already settled back into stillness if he had moved. "True enough," Malfoy said, with a sage little nod of his head.

"And it's not going to be the kind of bond I have with Andromeda, which is mostly based on the care for the children we're both tied to." Harry hunched his head down like a turtle and looked at his hands again. He had to do _something _to escape the intense pull of Malfoy's gaze. "We're here without them right now."

"Have you and Andromeda never visited without having Teddy between you?" Malfoy asked, in an amazingly soft voice.

Harry thought about it, trying to find a time, then shook his head.

"Then the bond is shallow," said Malfoy, and raised a placating hand when Harry opened his mouth to respond. "Children are a great shared interest, but it's not something that can keep you together all by itself, or Astoria and I would still be married. You need to be able to associate with adults sometimes, too."

"I can do that _all the time_," Harry said, and didn't care about the whine in his voice. Malfoy had already heard it all in Healer Brandeis's office. "I want to be with kids."

"Believe me," Malfoy went on as if he hadn't heard Harry, "I learned that to my cost. I was alone with Scorpius all the time, because I thought I had to be, to be a good father and to isolate him from the corrupting influences of the outside world."

"You've at least learned better than that, right?" Harry asked. He hated to think of what Scorpius's life would be like if Malfoy hadn't.

Malfoy gave a swift nod. "But that just means that I have the better perspective on what life would be if you never associated with anyone but a child, or saw other adults as simple gateways to a child." He leaned in with his eyes shining. Harry wondered why. The subject they were discussing had to be at least a little irritating for Malfoy. "You have this business in your life. That's good. You'll have a Mind-Healer you can trust. Even better. But are you going to have the same friends and this bond with Andromeda that's centered on Teddy and nothing else?"

"Ron and Hermione are great friends."

Malfoy nodded. "I think they must be, for your friendship to have survived what it has." Harry relaxed a little, hearing the apparently sincere admiration in Malfoy's voice. "But they have children, too, and you won't get to see Weasley as often now that you're no longer working as an Auror. What else are you going to do?"

Harry coughed for a moment, and then had to offer, "I'm sorry, Malfoy, but I don't think you can replace them."

"Not replace them. Add to them."

Harry looked at him uncertainly. "Even though you're not exactly a friend, in the same way they are?"

* * *

_I never realized how the life of a hero who's gone through so much is still narrow and circumscribed by these little codes of behavior he probably learned at Hogwarts._

What Draco wanted to say was that friendship was too small a word for all the possible connections that Potter could form to an adult the same age as him. That they should wait and see where it went-but for them to do that, Potter had to admit the connection existed in the first place. That Draco didn't intend to turn away from someone who had shared what Potter had with him and never speak to him again.

But Potter would, quite possibly, take that the wrong way. There was no reason that Draco couldn't say the other things, though.

"Have you always had clear and defined relationships with people, Potter?" he asked. "I don't recall you and Granger being friends your first few months at Hogwarts."

"Yes, but Ron and I became friends right away."

After what he had heard Potter speak of in Healer Brandeis's office, Draco thought he even knew why. Potter had flung himself headlong into the embrace of the first people to accept him. If Draco had had more compassion and forbearance when he was eleven, and hadn't taunted Weasley, he might have had Potter's friendship after all.

"But not you and Granger."

Potter fidgeted and looked away. "I'm not proud of the way I treated her," he said in a small voice. "It's not as though I had-well, no, I treated her badly and didn't stop Ron from talking badly about her."

"I'm sure she's long forgiven you," Draco said lightly. He really didn't intend to spend this evening discussing the intricacies of Potter's bond with Weasley and Granger. He thought Potter spent too much time brooding about them as it was. "What's _interesting _is that you have always made friends quickly, when you made them, and then not looked elsewhere. I want to know if you can accept the company of a different kind of-adult."

"What kind?" Potter looked at him warily.

Draco didn't know _every _answer to that question himself, but he could give Potter some. He looked Potter squarely in the eye and returned the conversation to himself and the words he'd already spoken. "Someone who wants the right to get angry about what he heard today. Somebody who thinks you were treated horribly by your relatives, you were _abused, _and that means you deserve more compassion than you've ever received."

Potter closed his eyes. "That makes me feel vulnerable and weak."

"Even when I won't spread your weakness around? Even when I've kept the other secret I learned about you?"

Potter stared at Draco as if he had never seen him before. Draco offered him a smile that was only a little smug.

"Healer Brandeis can't be angry in the same way," Draco said softly. "It's her job to help you heal from this, and she has to maintain more of a distance from it. I don't. I can commiserate with you."

"You _want _to?"

Before this morning, Draco would have seen that as an insult to himself, Potter thinking that Slytherins had so little compassion to spare that Draco couldn't possibly feel any. Now he saw it in a different light. Potter had had relatives who drummed it into his head, constantly, that he wasn't worthy of attention.

"I do," was all he said.

Potter slowly leaned back against the couch without taking his eyes off Draco. It was intoxicating, Draco had to admit. Head-turning. "What else?"

"I want to be a friend you can come over and have dinner with," Draco said. "Someone who can turn to you for advice about his son, without Scorpius being the only thing we ever talk about. Someone who can talk about Ethan Starfall with you." Potter's shoulders tensed, but he didn't shut himself off. "Someone, perhaps, who can tutor you in potions. You'll probably need some in your new job. At least Calming Draughts."

Potter blinked a few times, and then nodded. "I didn't think of that, but they would be useful."

_I want to be more than useful. _But Draco held his tongue. He didn't want to rush too much, either; Potter would only retreat and go back to holding his silence and licking his wounds in private. His tendency to do that was _huge, _if Draco considered how he hadn't told anyone else about Ethan Starfall or about the abuse before.

"I don't know," Potter was saying now, and Draco paid more attention. "It does sound like a friend to me."

Draco smiled. "Then let's call it that." He didn't think it would stay that way, because Potter was used to defining his friends only as Granger and Weasley, and when Draco did something that carried him beyond that boundary, Potter would react negatively. But it could be a good name at the beginning.

"Even though you were talking about how complicated this relationship between us is?" Potter hadn't taken his eyes off Draco, and Draco reminded himself that Potter had trained as an Auror and had said both insightful and cutting things about Draco in the past.

"Yes," said Draco. "You're right that there's probably not a word for it, and the search for one is making me tired." Potter's smile was a quick thing, there and then gone, but Draco treasured it the more for having seen it when many people wouldn't. "So. Now that we've discussed this, can we discuss your horrible childhood?"

Potter sighed, and his face aged, so Draco again saw the man who had spoken of his childhood that morning in Healer Brandeis's office. He blew across his teacup, although Draco was sure it was long since cool. "You'll probably want to hit me if I say that it's not as bad as it sounds."

"Yes," said Draco.

Potter blinked at him as if he hadn't expected the response despite what he'd said himself, and then he shrugged and looked aside. "It's not as bad because I lived through it. It's not as bad because other things in Hogwarts and the war were worse. It's not-it's not _not _bad. But I know how horrible life can get, now."

"That doesn't mean it wasn't wrong," Draco says, quietly. "Or that other people can't help you and care for you."

"Like Healer Brandeis."

"And me."

Potter paused, eyes locked on Draco's face, and then it happened. He gave the smallest of nods, and while it was small, it didn't look forced, or fearful, or anything else that would have happened before, when they hovered in that borderland where neither of them wanted to acknowledge their connection.

"Yes," said Potter.

Draco smiled.


	31. Renewal

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Thirty-One-Renewal_

"Ordinarily, I wouldn't be here. But Mathilda Patience said that you worked wonders with her little boy, and Ivor's as difficult a child as I've ever seen. Therefore, I'm here."

Harry did his best to keep his face calm and neutral. Maybe Ivor was as difficult a child as this woman had ever seen, but she was as difficult a _person _as Harry had ever seen. She reminded him of some of the witnesses he had interviewed when he was an Auror, who had been more interested in having their names in the papers than in giving him accurate information.

She sat so bolt upright that Harry doubted her posture could have been bettered by an iron rod down her spine. She followed Harry with grim eyes, and sniffed now and then, as if she thought Harry himself was a martyr to his bad posture. She had long, cold hands, and a long, pointed nose, and grey eyes that reminded Harry of Malfoy's-

Well. All right. The way that Malfoy's had once been. Harry had to admit that Malfoy hadn't looked at him like that in a long, long time.

Being reminded didn't actually soothe him, because then he had to think of whether he and Malfoy were friends or not, and that was still a confusing subject. He pushed away the thoughts that were themselves difficult and said, "What's your name, madam?"

Harry knew some witches he would have offended with that term of address, unless they actually sat on the Wizengamot, but she seemed to accept it as no less than her due. She sniffed and said, "Anne Quillona. You _can _replicate the results for my granddaughter, I assume?"

"It would depend a lot on what's happened to her," Harry said, holding her gaze and wondering what would make Quillona realize how rude she was being. It was nothing he had done so far, at least. "For one thing, I was only able to soothe Ivor because I used a guardian spell. I might not know a spell that can help-what's her name?"

"Justice Quillona," said his client, and Harry wondered whether that name had been her parents' idea or the grandmother's. "She suffered a Legilimency attack from one of the Death Eaters."

Harry sat upright in response, which Quillona seemed to regard with approval. Harry knew the response had nothing to do with her, though. His mind was pounding. Legilimens who could attack someone's mind like that had been rare even among the Death Eaters. "What happened, exactly?"

"She was visiting a Muggleborn schoolmate when a raid happened on the Muggleborn's house," said Quillona. Harry wondered if she'd even known the Muggleborn girl's name. "Most of the people there were killed. Justice hid in a cupboard, and came out when she thought it was safe. But there was one woman left there. She laughed when she saw Justice, and didn't kill her, but lanced into her mind, and left an image of such horror there that Justice still has trouble sleeping at night." Quillona's lips tightened. "I've taken her to Mind-Healers, but none of them were able to help her."

Harry picked up a quill and began jotting notes down. He wondered if he could help Justice in a simpler way than he had Ivor. "How many Mind-Healers have you taken her to?"

"Three. Do _not _suggest another." Quillona leaned towards him like a hawk about to take flight from a kill and straight into his face. "She doesn't trust any of them, and they do not make her feel comfortable."

Privately, Harry wondered how this woman expected any child, even her granddaughter whom she must expect more from, to be "comfortable" discussing a raid she'd at least witnessed part of, and an image in her head that sounded like Bellatrix Lestrange had put it there. "What about Healer Brandeis?"

Quillona opened her mouth, but Harry got there before she could. "She's very good, very discreet." He grimaced for a second, and then added the only thing that might convince Quillona. "She's the Mind-Healer that I'm trusting with my own attempts to recover from what happened to me during the war."

It wasn't a lie. Not entirely. He and Brandeis would probably discuss what had happened during the war eventually.

Quillona tapped her fingers once on her arm. "Do you know if she treats young patients, or patients with problems with Legilimency?"

"I don't," said Harry. "I know she practices Legilimency, though, because all Mind-Healers have to learn it to have the title." He matched Quillona stare for stare. "I have some experience _suffering _from Legilimency, but no experience trying to cure it. I couldn't even learn Occlumency when I was trying as hard as I could and had the best motivation in the world." His mind panged a little, remembering Sirius. "I don't think I could do anything about getting the image out of Justice's mind. Brandeis might."

"I came here because I thought _you _would help her," said Quillona softly, "because Mathilda recommended _you_. Are you going to tell me that you won't even try?"

"I can tell you that I think I'd cause more harm to Justice," said Harry, which was true. He didn't think what she had suffered was inherently more horrific than what Ivor had, but there, he had known a solution that might work almost immediately. "If I try to peek into her mind with my unpracticed Legilimency, I'll at least cause her pain."

"You will _not _hurt my granddaughter, Mr. Potter." Quillona spun her wand between her fingertips as if she would have loved to cast a curse on Harry and have it done with.

"I don't want to," said Harry. "That's why I'm sending you to a real Mind-Healer."

"I mean that you will not hurt my granddaughter even if you use your own Legilimency, because I would be there to make sure that you do not."

That gave Harry pause, for a minute. "Are you a Legilimens?" he asked Quillona. That might make a difference. If she knew some technique that would ease the way Harry might help Justice, if she could tell him the exact image in Justice's mind so that Harry could try and help her without looking at her memories-

"No." Quillona rapped her wand against her knee, so hard that Harry flinched. "I mean that I would not permit you to do it because _I would not permit you. _You would not be able to do it. I would be there."

Harry resisted the temptation to bury his head in his hands, but only barely. "I don't know what that means."

"I will make sure that you do not hurt her. You can treat her and not hurt her."

"I have no idea how I would." Harry kept himself from shaking the desk, but that was barely, too. "I'm doing the best thing I can by giving you Healer Brandeis's name and sending you to her. It would be irresponsible for me to do anything else."

Quillona stood and looked him full in the face. "Then I shall spread the news that Harry Potter refuses to assist a helpless child," she said, her voice so cold it was like being hit by stinging ice crystals in the throat of a wind. "That won't do your fledgling business any good, will it?"

Harry resisted the temptation to jump to his feet and shout, too. He would much rather give Justice Quillona to a Mind-Healer as skilled and calm as Brandeis than do something wrong. Ultimately, the integrity of a little girl's mind and keeping her free from pain mattered more than his own reputation. "Go ahead."

Quillona spent a moment more staring. Then she turned and walked from the office, steps delicate and precise.

Harry sat down and ran a hand through his hair. That could have gone better. He'd probably been too confrontational from the moment Quillona started talking about Legilimency. And who knew what she would say, and what echoes of rumors would come back to disrupt his business?

In the end, though, Harry knew he couldn't have done anything other than what he'd done. He put the fears aside as much as possible, and wrote out a letter to Healer Brandeis explaining Justice's situation. Maybe she could do something to at least seek out the Mind-Healers who had treated the girl before, and discover why they hadn't been able to help.

* * *

"Daddy! Why is Uncle Harry in the newspaper?"

_Something that he should have told me about, _was Draco's instinctive reaction, but he reminded himself that perhaps it wasn't that. Perhaps there was a good explanation for Potter's presence on the front page, or perhaps Scorpius was mistaking the photograph of someone else for Potter. He had done things like that before, thinking that a particular blond Wizengamot member was Draco for a time.

But when Draco picked up the paper, he saw that Scorpius was right. On the front of the page was an older photograph of Potter, looking stern in Auror robes as he posed before the entrance of the Ministry.

Underneath was a headline that made Draco's skin prickle.

_HARRY POTTER VISITING A MIND-HEALER?_

Draco swore, and looked up to find Scorpius staring at him, impressed.

"What was that word, Daddy?" Scorpius asked. "Say it again." He looked as if he might be ready to write it down.

"It was a word that I shouldn't have said," said Draco, and put the paper aside, folded up, away from that photograph of Potter that wouldn't behave any differently anyway, since it was older. "Now. What do you want for breakfast?"

"I want Uncle Harry to come over," said Scorpius, and there was a sparkle somewhere between petulant and militant in his eye that often foretold his longest tantrums.

Draco still didn't intend to back down, not now. "Well, he can't. He's busy. He's in the paper because he's about to be very busy." With Howlers if nothing else, Draco thought, and came close to shaking his head. He only hoped that Potter didn't think that Draco had been the one who'd betrayed the secret of his visiting Healer Brandeis.

Or that Brandeis herself wasn't discreet, for that matter. That would probably mean Potter would stop going to her, and Draco hated to think about the result.

"He's said that he would come whenever I needed him." Scorpius folded his arms.

"Why do you need him?"

Scorpius still looked taken aback when Draco asked him a question instead of simply dictating to him. Draco hid a smile. For now, there was more than one reason, more than just the desire to be good to Scorpius, to keep doing that.

"Because I want to ask him why he was in the paper," said Scorpius. "He's dressed like an Auror in that picture. Is he going back to the Aurors? I need him to tell me!"

_I am raising a Malfoy, _Draco thought, holding back a blink as he looked into Scorpius's innocently uplifted face. _An ingenious liar._

"He's not going back to the Aurors," said Draco. "They just used an old photograph of him because they don't have anything more recent." He felt a little twinge in his heart at that, wondering if Potter had succeeded in keeping his comings and goings from Healer Brandeis's office from the photographs, but not the words, of the reporters.

"But he could come over if he _wanted _to," said Scorpius. "He told us that he has no job. He could come if he wanted to!"

"For now, I need to send him an owl," said Draco. He had decided on that as the more reasonable course just now, although he had wanted to firecall Potter and reassure him that he wasn't the traitor. "I can ask in that owl when he'll be free to come over." He raised a hand as Scorpius opened his mouth again. "Remember that not every adult is as free as Uncle Blaise. Some of them have to stay away for a while, and your Uncle Harry does have a job, just a new one that has irregular hours."

It made his mouth feel strange to speak Potter's first name, but he disregarded the strangeness. After all, if they were going to become friends, Draco reckoned he would need to accustom himself to saying it at some point.

At least Scorpius was appeased, and started eating his porridge again and talking about Teddy with his mouth full. Draco reprimanded him a few times, but his attention was mostly on the article.

It said little more than the headline told. Only that Potter was visiting a Mind-Healer, and it managed to imply he probably should have gone a long time before. The reporter, no Rita Skeeter, didn't seem to have any information on what Potter had gone there for; the trauma of the war was a natural guess.

_And one that I hope Potter will encourage, _Draco thought, straightening the paper out with a snap and calmly calling Izzy to bring them some hot chocolate, since Scorpius was getting restless and kicking the rungs of his chair. _He will if he has any sense._

That was the one thing, unfortunately, that one couldn't _count _on Potter to have. Draco grimaced and shook his head. He would have to hope that Potter would see not only the necessity of keeping quiet but the wisdom of doing so.

* * *

Harry raised another ward over the glass on the windows of his office. He had studied this one carefully, and he hoped it would work. He could hardly forbid the entrance of all owl post if he wanted to conduct his business, but he didn't want any more of the harassing letters or demands for information on why he was visiting Brandeis or why he hadn't done so earlier, either.

_Why do people think this is their business?_

Harry sighed and shook his head. Well, he had known this would happen the instant that someone found out he was going to Healer Brandeis. It was why he had wanted to keep it secret in the first place, and one of the many, many reasons he had waited this long to go to a Mind-Healer at all. Everyone in the wizarding world still thought it was important that they know every single detail about Harry's life.

A particularly insistent bump of an owl against the new ward made Harry turn around cautiously. There were a few people that the ward would let owls from through automatically; others, it would block until Harry could deal with them personally.

This was an owl with a distinctive black mask around its eyes that Harry thought he would remember. He came over and let the bird in, wand at the ready. The owl soared across the room to the perch, though, and hooted at Harry softly. If he didn't know it, it at least seemed to know him, and not be hostile.

Harry kept his wand down at his side as he took the letter, because he was no fool, but the owl turned its beak to the side and preened its feathers. The letter lay tamely in Harry's hand, didn't sparkle, and didn't flinch or vanish or turn different colors when he cast a few protective spells on it.

Harry finally opened it, and blinked when he found Malfoy's distinctive script there.

_Potter, I know what you must be thinking when you saw the newspaper article this morning, but I wasn't the one who told them about Healer Brandeis. I don't think Healer Brandeis ever would have, either. Having patients trust her discretion is her livelihood and her passion. If you're considering stopping your visits to her because this got out, please reconsider._

Harry spent a minute or so blinking, not sure what surprised him more. Malfoy should know him better by now than to think Harry would decide he was a traitor.

And on the other hand, Harry hadn't thought Malfoy so passionately committed to his mental health that he would care if Harry went to see Healer Brandeis, or chose a different Mind-Healer, or decided to try meditation standing on his hand to cure his own despair.

It was the sort of thing Ron or Hermione would worry about. It was the sort of thing a friend would do, putting Harry's own health ahead of his worries. Sure, Malfoy had wanted to clear his name, but Ron would have done the same thing to make sure Harry knew he was innocent.

Harry sat down hard on his desk. The owl looked up from preening and cocked its head as if trying to figure out why the strange human had gone weak in the knees.

_Okay. Fine. I knew he wanted to be a friend, but this-this is clearer to me than anything else he could have done._

Harry stood up with a little, soft breath. He could write back to Malfoy, and normally he would, to let him know right away Harry had never suspected him. But he thought something this personal and special deserved a firecall.

"No reply," he told the owl, and got a disapproving look until he crossed over to the fireplace and tossed in a handful of Floo powder. Then the bird fluttered its wings and did a little dance on the perch before soaring out the window.

Harry found his face aching with his smile. He was firecalling a friend, and while he didn't need an owl's approval to do so, it was nice to have additional confirmation that he was doing the right thing.

* * *

Draco blinked and touched his chin for a second; Potter's intent gaze had made him think he had a piece of food clinging there from breakfast or something. But that small worry, almost manufactured, didn't count against the intense relief rushing through him. Potter didn't blame him. That was worth the anxious hour he'd spent brooding over the wording of the letter.

"I knew all along that it wasn't you who did that, don't worry about it," Potter was telling him reassuringly. "I had a client who wanted me to help her granddaughter, but the granddaughter's problem was with Legilimency, and I didn't think I could do it. I told her I was going to Mind-Healer Brandeis, and I recommended that she take her granddaughter there instead. She told me that she was going to tell everyone how I refused to help her. I think she thought _that _would be the great scandal, how I made promises and didn't keep them." Potter snorted. "It was probably as much of a surprise to her as anyone else when the papers were more interested in the fact that I was using the same Mind-Healer."

"Who was it?" Draco asked. He could think of a few candidates for people who would be that ungrateful and stubborn, but most of those were also dead or in Azkaban. He hadn't kept up with most of the families who had taken in orphaned children, besides.

Potter closed his lips stubbornly.

"Why not _tell _me?" Draco demanded. "You've already told me what happened. Why would you keep the rest of this a secret?" A sudden, jealous thought occurred to him, and he asked the question before he could decide whether it was a good idea to keep silent. "You'd give the name to Weasley or Granger, wouldn't you?"

Potter kept eyeing him. At last, he spoke, when Draco made a particularly impatient gesture that was hard to misunderstand. "Yes. But I think they would only say how awful it was, not swear a sort of revenge against this woman that might be hard to take back."

Draco blinked. "You think I'd kill her."

"You're not a killer." Potter shrugged. "I think you'd spread gossip or do something to embarrass her. But her granddaughter is dealing with enough problems as it is, and from the thick skin I saw on this woman, her granddaughter would be the real victim. Leave well enough alone."

Draco considered it again. It was true that his first impulse had been to do something like that, but there was one reason, besides Potter wishing he wouldn't, for him not to do it. "Are you planning some revenge of your own?"

Potter frowned. "No. For the same reasons that I just told you to drop it."

"She can't get away with disrupting your business and revealing your private life to the papers," said Draco. "Especially since you know who she is."

"Revenge would be my priority if it was going to be anyone's, right?" Potter frowned harder at him. "You'd agree with that, right? I would be the one who would be able to track her down and scold her, or prank her, or whatever I thought would be appropriate, right?"

"Right," Draco said warily. He privately thought that it wasn't a good sign when Potter kept ending his sentences with "right," but he would go along with it for now.

"And I say that it's not my priority. So leave it." Potter folded in his lips and looked as stubborn as a bull.

"But what if her rumors sink your business?" Draco stared at him. He couldn't understand why Potter would go to all this trouble to establish a business he could live by, one that would let him be close to children, and then be content to let it fail. "Would you give the whole thing up just because it would _maybe _hurt a child?"

"Yes."

Draco buried his head in his hands. "You're impossible," he muttered.

"I don't think it will come to that," said Potter, in what he probably thought was a comforting way. "Most of the people who want to blame me for going to a Mind-Healer are idiots who can't maintain a long-term campaign of hatred or gossip. There are a few who might hate me for this, or think that I shouldn't be treating children when I'm under the care of a Mind-Healer myself, but only a few. Most of the owls I've got are just impertinent people who think they have a right to know everything about my life because I'm a celebrity." He rolled his eyes. "I don't think-"

"But it _could _happen," Draco interrupted.

"It could," Potter said, infuriatingly. "Maybe."

"I wish you would let me do something for you," Draco muttered, knowing he sounded silly and fretful, and not able to help it.

Potter's face softened. "You've shown me you're really a friend, when you wrote that letter not just to exonerate yourself from blame, but to make sure I felt all right. I'll do what I can, and I'll tell you if you can help."

Draco breathed out slowly. He supposed that was the price of being a Gryffindor's friend: you had to abide by more rules and keep your word. "Fine."

The smile Potter gave him before ending the firecall was extraordinarily sweet, and Draco held the memory to him like a talisman. He would do a lot to make sure that smile wasn't quenched.

It was strange, to know that _this _was the nature of their connection, that part of him wanted to fight for Potter. But if that was the way things were to be, then he would make it so.

He only hoped that it wouldn't be necessary to break the rules for Potter's own good.


	32. Recovery

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Thirty-Two—Recovery_

"Mr. Potter? I know that you must be wary of visitors now, after your last experience, but I need to speak with you."

Harry leaned his head out his office window. A woman he didn't recognize stood on the front step, her cloak braced around her as if against the wind, although Harry didn't think it was very cold today. She had long brown hair, and brown eyes that made Harry want to trust her immediately. He wasn't _that _stupid, but he did look at her thoughtfully as he opened the door and let her in.

"Thank you," said the witch, and shook some rain off her cloak. "I know how it must look, but I have arthritis bad enough that it aches all day if I don't wear something specially warming."

Harry flushed a little. He hadn't meant for his thoughts to be so visible on his face. "You're welcome here," he said. "What's your name?"

"Katherine Huggins," the woman said, and Harry thought he recognized the name for just a moment before she continued, "The Head of Child Welfare Services, the one who wrote to you when you asked if the Ministry had a department dedicated to aiding war orphans. I'd like to talk to you about the rumors that Anne Quillona has spread."

Harry paused before he turned away. "You know she spread them?"

"She's a frequent visitor," said Katherine dryly, and took the chair in front of Harry's desk, drawing her cloak even harder around her. Harry waved his wand at the fire and built it up, and received a grateful nod. "I feel sorry for her granddaughter, but Madam Quillona was the nearest blood relative, and most of the time, the Ministry won't hear of the child going anywhere else."

"That's something that needs to change," Harry muttered as he sat down behind his desk.

He'd thought his voice was soft enough to escape notice, but Katherine immediately fastened her gaze on him. "Yes. Well, I suspect that placing you in the Muggle world was not the best idea."

Harry froze, but Katherine shook her head. "I'm not referring to anything specific. Not even rumors, this time. Simply the acknowledgment that you performed a lot of accidental magic at your relatives' home, and there's usually a reason for that." She huddled closer to the fire again and sighed in relief. "Now. The main reason I wanted to speak to you is to ask if you think you're mentally stable enough to be counseling children and families."

Harry found himself with no words for a moment. Then some came to him. "Well. That's blunt."

"Yes," said Katherine, and didn't seem as if she was going to apologize for it. "I find that I need to be, in this job. I've dealt with people who thought I couldn't tell that they were abusing their children, and others whose desire was for Galleons, or advancement in the Ministry, or even my job. I've learned to judge people well." She paused and studied him. "Admittedly, we've only talked for a short time, but you don't _seem _mentally unstable."

Harry snorted before he thought about it. "Why ask me if I think I am or not? Why not judge for yourself?"

"Well, if you were sitting in a corner staring into space or attacking imaginary enemies, I wouldn't need to ask you." Katherine folded her arms close and turned a little, probably getting her legs into a more comfortable position. "But the only reason I came is because of the rumors spreading as a result of that article. I didn't know you were visiting a Mind-Healer. I think it's fine. But other people need to see something being done, and it can't hurt to have official Ministry approval of you as well as your business."

Harry hesitated, then nodded slowly. "I think—I'm better than I've been in some time. There was the war, and that wasn't easy to deal with. But something else happened three years ago that a friend has finally persuaded me I need help with, since the ways I'd tried to cope with it weren't working."

"What happened three years ago?" Katherine asked quietly.

Harry swallowed once, and then made the decision that he probably _could _trust her. Once again, if word of his condition spread all over the papers, then he would know who to blame.

"A combination of hexes hit me that made it impossible for me to have children."

Katherine blinked, once, hard. Then she nodded. "Certain things become clear about why you wanted this job."

Harry frowned at her. "I want to help people, too."

"I don't doubt that." Katherine watched him thoughtfully. "Then my question is a bit different. Are you sure that _this _is the best thing for you to do? If you're getting help from a Mind-Healer, then perhaps you'll learn to cope with your loss in a different way. You might abandon this business if you become healed enough."

Harry bit his tongue for a second. Then he said, "Even if I feel better, I won't do that."

"Really?"

Harry met her stare for stare. "Yes. Really."

"Perhaps you won't, then," said Katherine, unhelpfully. She put a hand beneath her chin and studied him again, then smiled a little. "Understand, Mr. Potter, I don't think that you're inherently untrustworthy. But I have seen even those people who dedicate the most time to caring for children lose interest when something else comes up, unless the child is their own."

"Let me guess," said Harry, and managed to sound normal, he thought. She already knew he was upset. But he didn't have to lash out at her. "The people who might want to work for your department in the Ministry?"

Katherine nodded grimly back. "Yes. Sometimes I have people who tell me that it won't matter what I can pay them, that they just want to be around children and work with them. Many of them haven't spent much time around children at all." She paused. "I have to admit, when I first heard about Mathilda Patience saying you wouldn't take payment from her, that was what I thought of."

_The woman's a menace_, Harry thought. Mathilda had apparently taken her mission to promote his business by word of mouth seriously indeed. "Well, I do want to help. I didn't think I could help Justice Quillona, so I told her grandmother to take her to the Mind-Healer I have."

"Understandable." Katherine hesitated once more. "How much money do you need this business to make?"

"I have enough of my parents' fortune left to live on for a little while," said Harry. "But I'm not rich in the way that some people would think of it." _Like Malfoy, for example_. "I can try to establish my business and the trust that people will need to come to me."

"All right." Katherine stood and nodded. "I've seen enough to give you the official Ministry approval. I'll announce it to the papers tomorrow. That ought to take care of some of the pressure that you've got from this article."

Harry smiled. "Thank you."

"Do be careful of Anne Quillona," said Katherine. "She didn't mean to stir up such a firestorm, only ruin your business." She paused when Harry snorted. "Yes. _Only_. But she can be vengeful when provoked."

"I'll remember that," said Harry. Perhaps he would be talking to George, or even Malfoy, about defenses against Quillona after all. "And in the meantime, I think I'll firecall Mathilda Patience and ask her to tone down what she's saying a little."

"That would be just as well." Katherine looked around the office once more, as though she could see what Harry had intended for it rather than the bare walls he had right now. "I hope you succeed, Mr. Potter. It's an intriguing idea, and a service that I think we need outside the Ministry. My office is sometimes too tied down by regulations to do as much as I'd like."

Harry nodded respectfully back to her, and got up to open the door. "I hope to do that. And what I told you about—about not being able to have children is true, but I'm doing this for other reasons, too. The ones you mentioned."

Katherine paused outside the door and turned around, peering at him. "A bit of advice, if you'll take it."

"Of course." Harry waited eagerly. He thought Katherine could probably tell him a lot about running a business, if she wanted to.

But what she said was, "I think that you need something in your life to live for besides your business alone. Even if it increases the chance that you'll find something else to focus on. I think you're right that you wouldn't simply abandon this business and the people who depend on you. But don't make your work your life."

Harry blinked. "I'm not. That's one reason that I stopped being an Auror, because I noticed a tendency to make that job my life."

"Just remember," said Katherine, with a small, sad smile, and patted him once on the shoulder before she walked out the door.

Harry shook his head as he shut the door. No matter what he did, someone always seemed to think it was wrong, and to want to give him advice.

All right, sometimes he needed the advice. But it was still annoying.

* * *

"Can we visit Teddy today?"

That was at least a change from the endless requests to visit "Uncle Harry." Draco put down the history book he'd been reading to Scorpius out of—give Scorpius credit, he was at least pretending to listen—and leaned back in the large, comfortable library chair he'd been taking lately when they were in here. "Let me firecall Andromeda. She'll probably say yes, but I want to announce us."

Scorpius nodded. The instant Draco had stopped reading, he'd slumped sideways, and now he was toying with a thread that stuck out from the knee of his robe.

"Are you all right?" Draco asked.

Scorpius looked up. "Izzy said something about Uncle Harry firecalling the other day," he said. "And you didn't _tell _me."

It actually took Draco a second to remember what Scorpius meant. His past few days had been occupied: another visit with Theo, one of Pansy's whirlwind trips to the shops that usually meant she was pouting and trying to conceal it, and a cautious conversation with his father that had left him in a better mood after it ended than when it started, which was an exception to most of his talks with his parents, period.

"That," Draco said. "Oh. No. I didn't tell you. Mr. Potter called to discuss something extremely private with me, and I didn't want you to be upset because he didn't have time to speak to you right then."

Scorpius stared at him for long enough that Draco had to remind himself he was the father here, and not the child. Then Scorpius looked away and sighed. "Okay," he said, his word drawn-out to the point that Draco stood up immediately.

"I'll firecall Andromeda now," he offered, neutrally, and went over to the hearth.

Andromeda was home, and looked happy to see him for once. "Teddy is driving me mad," she confessed, after a look over her shoulder to make sure that Teddy wasn't standing behind her. "He keeps complaining he's bored, and then he doesn't want to do anything I come up with for him to do. He'll be happy to see his cousin."

Draco nodded, and herded Scorpius through the fireplace. Scorpius leaped through and immediately ran over to Teddy, who had come into the room by the time they got there.

"I want to learn how to fly upside-down," Scorpius announced.

"We'll do that," said Teddy, and gave his grandmother a pleading look.

"Sticking Charms for the both of you," said Andromeda at once, and led them outside. Draco followed slowly, noticing for the first time that the garden at Andromeda's house was pleasant, bigger than he had expected, and with a huge border of sunflowers that might cushion a fall from a broom.

"Nothing is going to happen," Andromeda said, almost under her breath, without looking back at him, and then started casting spells on the brooms that Teddy held out to her.

Draco started and turned back to her. "At least I'm different than I would have been a month ago," he said. "Then, I would have been mainly worried about how Scorpius falling off his broom would affect his future self-confidence as a Malfoy."

Andromeda gave him a sharp look, but it wasn't like some of the ones she had used when Draco was talking to her before, about Potter. This one was considering. "I think we have some things to talk about," she said.

Draco nodded distractedly, and watched as Scorpius climbed onto his broom. Teddy followed a second later, and flew a circle around Scorpius. Scorpius didn't get upset, though, just turned the broom to follow Teddy and demanded, "Show me that!"

Teddy made his broom dance back and forth, and Draco blinked. He thought he would have been hard-pressed to do that himself when he was Teddy's age. Perhaps Teddy would grow up to be a professional Quidditch player. "You have to master a few other skills first," Teddy said, and led Scorpius into a spiral.

Draco watched them long enough to convince himself that he could see the shimmer of the Sticking Charms on Scorpius's legs, and then followed Andromeda inside. She served him biscuits that glowed with chocolate and scones that shimmered with butter. Draco hid a smile behind his cup, which he had asked be of just plain water. He'd already had his fill of tea today.

"You care for Scorpius more than I thought at first," said Andromeda, rolling the words in her mouth like loose teeth. "And I don't think that you—that you're trying to take Harry away from me anymore. If he wants to come back, he'll come."

Draco nodded patiently, waiting. Andromeda might have said the same things in a letter, but he didn't think she would have _liked _to. Still, he thought this conversation was also going to last longer than just those words.

Andromeda looked down at her knees and squeezed her kneecap for a moment. "I want to know if you'll speak to Harry for me, though," she whispered. "Just to ask him to visit me, and give me a _chance _to apologize and tell him that I didn't mean that comment about family. I thought it was a small thing, that he'd get over it. But he isn't."

"Despite what you just said about him coming back if he wanted to come?" Draco asked as gently as he could.

Andromeda looked up and blinked. "He has to hear the apology first before he can make that decision."

Draco picked up a biscuit and ate while he thought about it. Normally, he didn't interfere in other people's families. He knew Blaise had a lot of conflicts with his mother and Pansy with her husband, but he didn't ask about them. Likewise, they left him alone when it came to _his _parents. Blaise giving him advice about Scorpius at all was a little amazing, when you thought about it that way.

Still, he wanted to do this. He couldn't deny that. And it had little to do with the fact that Andromeda was family asking him for a favor. That was important, but Draco knew he would have politely refused if it had been anyone other than Potter she was asking him to help her with.

_Why is that? _

Draco felt a shifting heat move across his skin, and Andromeda cleared her throat. "If it makes you that uncomfortable, then I'm sorry I asked."

Mortified to realize he was blushing, Draco shook his head sharply and said, "I'll talk to Potter. But I'll only pass along the message that you'd like to see him. I'm not going to urge him to come."

"All right," said Andromeda. "That's more than I would get of anyone else I asked, I suspect." She leaned back and watched Draco for a long moment, her eyes narrowed as though she was contemplating him in another light than the one Draco wanted her to see him in. Then she added, as if casually, "You're going to see him and ask him soon?"

Draco relaxed slowly. She didn't sound as though she thought there was anything _that _unusual about his blush. Instead, she probably just wanted Potter back in her home and reconciled with her as soon as possible, so she didn't have to spend any more time feeling guilty.

"Of course," he said, and drained his cup, wishing that it didn't feel so much like an _excuse_.

* * *

Harry rolled his eyes and flung the letter into the fire. It was from Anne Quillona, informing him in stiff and haughty terms that she had taken Justice to Healer Brandeis and the Healer hadn't been able to help, _either_.

"I only recommended her, I didn't say she was infallible," Harry muttered to his walls, because there was no one else around to hear him, and sank down on his chair. He was lonely and bored and out of sorts. A few people had come in to see him, lured by Mathilda's gushing words or the official announcement that Katherine had made, but not many, and they had all been vague and only promised to bring their children to see him later. Most had been so vague that Harry couldn't even tell whether he could help them or not.

He tipped his head back and stared at the ceiling. He'd eaten dinner, and filled out what would hopefully be the last of the forms to establish his business as a legitimate one. And now his evening was filled with hours of sitting on his arse.

_Hours I used to spend working or writing about Ethan._

Harry gave himself a sharp shake. His evening didn't _have _to be filled with hours sitting on his arse, now did it? He knew Ron and Hermione were busy tonight, over at the Burrow to give Molly a few hours with her grandchildren and Ron and Hermione a few hours with family, but he didn't have to sit around waiting for them.

He stood up and walked into his bathroom. There, he carefully examined his face in the mirror and then shut his eyes. He'd cast Disguise spells plenty of time during his Auror training and his actual war. He could do it now.

"_Oculus muto_," he whispered.

The spell shifted into his eyes, slowly changing the color of them. Harry shivered. Changing the color wasn't dangerous the way changing the actual shape could be, but it did make him feel as though something cold and soft was spreading across his eyes' surface, as though someone with a tiny little brush was painting them a different color.

When he looked again, his eyes were a pale, watery blue that he thought he'd accidentally based on the eyes of some Death Eaters he knew. With a shrug, he straightened his hair, and then cast a glamour that hovered right in front of the scar on his head. Then he studied himself in the mirror again.

He supposed the resemblance to Harry Potter was still there for someone who looked for it, but he doubted that many people would look for it where he was going.

He hadn't dated since the end of his marriage. He'd had too many other things to content him and occupy his time. Now he didn't.

But Harry thought he deserved to have fun like anyone else. Or at least voices around him, discussing things that had nothing to do with Dark wizards and Dark magic. He could go to a pub like this and drink without a concern that someone would want to either flatter him or kill him the moment they saw his face.

He wouldn't lie to someone to the extent of denying who he was. But he would use a false name and a false face for those hours. He had the _right _to do so. Lots of people did worse things every day.

_That doesn't make this right._

Harry shook himself. He was being stupid, holding himself to such a high standard that he felt worse about minor things like this than some of the major mistakes he'd made. Malfoy would say that he was being stupid, surely.

Harry hesitated.

_Malfoy?_

But although Harry felt as if he had hours of the evening left, it was still seven, after dinner for most people, and Malfoy was probably occupied in putting Scorpius to bed or visiting with his friends who'd been invited. The mere thought of crashing into a party that he hadn't known was happening made Harry blush hard enough to show up through the glamour on his scar.

No, he wasn't going to wonder and worry about what Malfoy would say, or Ron and Hermione. Maybe he would think about what Ginny would have said, but only to imagine her mouth falling open in astonishment.

He would go out and have a nice, normal evening, and he would come back and go to bed with no one the wiser, and no one would have been hurt, even if a few people had been fooled into thinking he was someone else. How many people went to pubs every day and brushed elbows with fellow drinkers and dance partners they would never see again, whose names they never bothered to ask?

_Maybe in the Muggle world. It's rarer in the wizarding world._

Harry nodded sharply. Then he would go to a Muggle pub, and he would _enjoy himself._.

And standing here in front of the mirror and fuming at himself, or wondering about how well the glamours would hold, wasn't the same thing.

The slam of the door didn't shake the house, but Harry felt as though it should have.


	33. On the Town

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Thirty-Three—On the Town_

Draco spent a moment considering whether he should firecall Potter or owl him, but in the end, the decision was easy. Draco wanted to firecall him. He wanted to see his face and hear his voice, and it was easier to judge Potter's reaction to his tone face-to-face, too—a tone that Draco didn't always get right in a letter.

The notion he might want to do so for other reasons—

It was _plausible, _but Draco didn't know how much time he wanted to waste on it. He didn't even know if he was attracted to Potter, for Merlin's sake. He only knew that he had reacted negatively to Potter's attempt to put distance between them, and claimed friendship. Friendship wasn't exactly the right name for what lay between them, but maybe that name didn't exist.

It was silly to worry about when he had a firecall to make.

Draco sat before the hearth and worried about it anyway, until it dawned on him that no one had come to answer Potter's Floo in an absurdly long time. He hesitated, wondering for a moment if Potter had gone over to his friends' house.

He could have. He could be visiting the entire Weasley clan, for all Draco knew. Or Andromeda, if he had got over his anger with her.

There were lots of reasons that he might be missing from home on a Friday night. None of them were worrying.

But Draco cast in the Floo powder that would call Grimmauld Place anyway, and kept waiting long past the time when the Floo had chimed enough to annoy a human there. _Possibly _Potter's house-elf would be there. Possibly not, since Potter had said that he spent most of his time at Hogwarts, but he was the only one Draco could think of who might be able to tell him where Potter was, apart from Andromeda if Potter had gone to her.

At last, the Floo opened, and the dirtiest house-elf Draco had ever seen popped his head through and scowled at him. "What is Master Malfoy wanting?" he asked.

_Only Potter would keep a house-elf that ungracious, _Draco thought, and hid a wince at the thought of what would have happened if Potter's ambition had been to be accepted in pure-blood society instead of to have children. "I wanted to know if Potter's there. I tried to firecall him at home, and he didn't answer."

Kreacher flapped his ears with a rapid shake of his head. "Master Potter is not being here."

Draco hesitated. He knew that perhaps he was being silly to be concerned, but this time, it wasn't so easy to dismiss the fears as groundless. "Do you know where he went?"

"Master Harry is not being here for many days," said the house-elf, in a voice that closed the matter, and started to close the Floo, too.

"Wait!" Draco cried, and maybe because he was of the blood of the Blacks who had once owned the house, Kreacher stopped and gave him a glare instead of simply vanishing behind the shut Floo. "I know that my house-elves can find me if someone really needs me, even if I'm out of the house. Can you do the same for Potter?"

"What is this message that is being so urgent?" Kreacher asked, sounding as if he was interested in spite of his sullenness.

"It concerns family," said Draco, which was perfectly true so far as it went.

Kreacher squinted his eyes shut. "If Master Malfoy is referring to the disgusting Mistress Potter, Master Malfoy is being as stupid as house-elves wanting freedom."

Draco blinked, wondering how in the world Potter had had time to start dating and find a "Mistress Potter," but then realized Kreacher was probably talking about Potter's former wife. A traditional house-elf would find a blood traitor disgusting. "No. It's about—it's about Andromeda Black, who visited a while ago with her grandson."

Kreacher squinted even harder, although Draco had previously thought his eyes had disappeared as much as they could. Draco held his breath. It was true that this wasn't _so _urgent that he couldn't give the message to Potter later, but he wanted to know now.

And he wanted to know where Potter was. The idiot was probably out getting himself into trouble, and Draco would have to deal with it _anyway_. He might as well know where he'd have to go, too.

"Very well, Kreacher is being not so busy," the elf finally muttered, and turned away from the fireplace and waved his hands up and down. Draco hadn't ever seen one of his own elves trying to locate him—of course not, since he would be out of the house at the time—and he watched curiously.

But whatever Kreacher did, Draco couldn't make out a pattern to it, any more than he could understand how a house-elf appearing the way it did was like Apparating. As far as he could tell, Kreacher just twitched his dirty fingers and murmured to himself, and then he spun around and stared in disbelief.

_Fuck, Potter, have you found trouble already? _Draco held his face bland, and asked, "What is it?"

"Master Harry Potter is being in the Muggle world?" breathed the elf, barely paying attention to Draco.

Draco stood up too quickly, and nearly knocked his head on his own mantel. He sat down again and said with the kind of quiet viciousness that commanded attention from his own elves when they were being difficult, "How can you sense that? And where is he?"

"He is being in a dark Muggle building with stains on the walls," Kreacher said, and sniffed. "Yes, the smells of _drinks_," he added, in disgust. "Muggles drinks." He sniffed again, listened again, and then said, "It is being in a street that is having a fountain of a rearing horse not far from the entrance. The horse is having a green saddle. And there is a sign above the door that is having a red hammer on it."

Draco nodded. "Good. Thank you, Kreacher," he remembered to add. Kreacher had done him a favor, he technically wasn't Draco's elf, and this might mitigate Potter's irritation, if he got upset about Draco coming after him in the Muggle world.

But the thought of that irritation, and even the knowledge that Potter was probably all right if he was in a Muggle pub, didn't move Draco. He was going after him. And he would ask Potter what the hell he was thinking.

Why? Because he _wanted _to, that was why.

* * *

Harry had to admit he wasn't having as much fun as he had hoped, but on the other hand, he was surrounded with voices and laughter and jokes he couldn't understand. And these were people he _didn't _know.

Harry would get used to being around them, he silently vowed to himself. He would come back here, probably. It was the first pub he had wandered into, one entirely by chance, but the people here didn't stare in the way that they would if he had his scar visible or his glamours were failing.

He could get to know some people. With time, he might get to understand the games showing on the telly and the laughter that had nearly killed a few people when someone asked how Sam's wife was. He could accept, without flinching, the slap that someone had given his back because that other person was happy and drunk and just wanted other people to share his happiness.

This was the life that normal people lived, and the life that Harry had been ignoring by holing up in his house and writing as Ethan. These people had an advantage over the ideal life he'd imagined for himself. They were _real_.

He sipped his drink again. He didn't even know the name of it, just that it was strong and dark and made his eyes tear up a little like Firewhisky would. The barkeep had simply given it to Harry without much of a glance, and Harry thought he'd probably been mistaken for someone else who came in often.

So far, Harry couldn't say he was disappointed with his results for the venture. He had barely spoken, only grunted and nodded, and laughed a few times when people around him laughed and it seemed appropriate.

But he was the one who had chosen to hold off on talking, wasn't he? He was the one who had decided that he would only observe on this first evening out. Maybe he would speak if someone talked to him, but he didn't want to make friends yet.

_Coward_.

Hidden behind the drape of his cloak—which he had Transfigured into a heavy coat as soon as he realized how much it would stand out in a Muggle area—Harry winced a little. Yes, he wasn't at his best right now. He was only now climbing out of the cocoon that losing Ethan had cast him into.

He would get better. And hiding inside his house and sullenly staring at the walls wasn't the way to do that. He had to go through these awkward first steps before he could ever set foot on the road.

The door of the pub opened, and Harry glanced towards it out of habit. He had already decided that maybe if he saw someone who looked friendly and like they were searching for a place to sit, he would talk to them. Or someone who seemed unfamiliar with the rest of the pub and like they didn't come here often. It would be easier to speak to another stranger.

The person who stepped in seemed like they were searching, all right, but not for a place to sit. There was Malfoy, his eyes snapping from face to face. He wore a shirt and trousers for once instead of robes—maybe he'd done the same thing as Harry and Transfigured them from his ordinary clothes—but he was getting glances even for that. For one thing, the clothes were way too nice for his surroundings, a crisp white shirt and black trousers that looked as if he were wearing them to a masquerade party.

Harry blinked and gaped and lowered his head over his drink. _What is he doing here?_

Of course, a second later he knew, and felt a little annoyed. Whether Malfoy had used magic to track him down or asked someone—although Harry hadn't told anyone which pub he was going to—then he was here to bother Harry. Harry turned determinedly back to his drink. He might be failing to blend in much, but he wasn't going to single himself out by responding to Malfoy's sweeping gaze, either. The whole point was to make _new _friends. Or at least acquaintances.

"I'm looking for someone," said Malfoy, and his voice made a lot of people around Harry go quiet. It was too loud for the atmosphere that Harry had already noticed in the pub. Yes, it was noisy here, but that came from the combination of voices, not one alone. "His name is Harry Potter. Is he here?" And he went on standing there with his head turning slightly from side to side, as though he didn't see the stares that fastened on him.

Maybe he didn't, Harry thought with a slight sense of despair. To Malfoy, Muggles weren't part of his daily existence. He would stare in much the same way if he saw one in the wizarding world, but to him, _he _was the normal one and the one who ought to be home in any situation. Stares would probably register as compliments.

"No one by that name here," said a hulking man in the corner who looked as though Malfoy had woken him up. "Go 'way."

Similar mutters succeeded him. Malfoy didn't flush red and back out the door, which Harry knew was what he would have done himself—assuming he was even enough of a fool to come to a pub like this in the first place and name who he was looking for, which he wouldn't have been. Malfoy only frowned and shook his head.

"No, I tracked him here. I'm certain he's here."

At the word "tracked," a different kind of mutter ran around the room, and Harry saw a glint and flash from something metallic. He sighed. He doubted that any Muggle would actually try to knife Malfoy in front of the entire room, but on the other hand, he could be setting up a less than pleasant reception for himself later, when he left.

It didn't seem like he would leave without his prey, either. His mouth was set in a frown that Harry knew could twist to petulance. He and Scorpius were a lot alike that way.

Harry lumbered to his feet, trying to make it seemed like he was heavier and drunker than he actually was, and wavered his way up to Malfoy. "No trouble, right?" he said, and droned the words out as he turned Malfoy towards the door. "No trouble."

The response he got was still a mutter, and there were people watching Malfoy intently, but it was calmer. Malfoy let himself go with Harry's touch, but there was a turn of his head and a slight smile that said he knew perfectly well who Harry was.

"So," he said, when they'd got outside the door of the pub and Harry was shaking the light rain off the hood of his coat, "why did you come _here _of all places?"

Harry thought about ignoring everything, both the words and the disdain in the words, and going back inside the pub. Malfoy would—

No, actually, Malfoy probably _would _follow him, and keep asking him questions in a loud voice that would draw everyone's attention and make Harry's attempt to blend into the crowd and have a normal evening out useless.

Harry sighed and threw his coat back. Malfoy raised an unimpressed eyebrow, and Harry thought it was at the coat, or maybe the state of Harry's hair, until he said, "Interesting glamours. But far inferior to your real face, I find. Remove them. Now."

"You're a git sometimes, you know that, right?" Harry asked roughly as he waved his wand and banished the glamours that clung in front of his eyes and scar. Malfoy only stared at him in something that looked like pleasure, and Harry swore and caught his arm. "Listen, this is _stupid. _I came here because I wanted to go to a place where no one knew me and I could lose myself. And maybe make some friends."

Malfoy jerked back as though Harry had scalded him. Harry watched him hopefully. Maybe he'd thought better of his project of tracking Harry down, and now he would go elsewhere, and Harry could return to the pub.

Or another one. He would probably get teasing about being queer if he went back in now.

"Why do you need to make new friends?" Malfoy asked, and his voice hissed. "I thought the ones you had were enough for you."

_Oh, fuck. _Harry shook more water off his head. "Ron and Hermione are great. But they're busy tonight, and I was lonely, and I finally started thinking how pathetic it was that I was sitting around mourning the loss of Ethan and not doing anything else." He moved out of the rain under another nearby building's slanted front roof, and Malfoy followed, his eyes still darker with outrage than Harry's simple little problem merited. "I wanted to get my life back on track."

"And you never thought of me? Your _other _friend?"

Harry blinked. "Of course I did."

"And?" Malfoy set himself in the same stance that he would use if he was about to engage in a duel.

"It was late," Harry said, and shrugged. "I thought that you were either putting Scorpius to bed or probably had a party with some of your friends over."

"You _thought_." Malfoy seemed to grow two sizes, even though Harry knew that was impossible without magic that he would have felt Malfoy casting. "You don't have much luck with assumptions, do you? Assuming that you could just live past your memories. Assuming that two friends were all you needed. Why—"

The rising tone of his voice was starting to attract attention, at least if the people slouching through the streets were turning their heads in Malfoy's direction the way Harry thought they were. He gripped Malfoy's arm to quiet him. "Let's take this off the street," he suggested, and drew further back into the shadows. Malfoy, surprisingly, came with him.

When Harry was sure that no one was looking at them, he Apparated home, through the wards, and turned around with a little sigh of exasperation to look at Malfoy as they landed with a bump in the dining room. "Now, will you tell me what has you so upset?"

* * *

Draco could feel the boiling emotions in him boiling _up_. It had seemed so simple a matter, when he followed Potter into the Muggle world, to find him and give him Andromeda's message and go home. And somehow, it had turned into this situation in the Muggle pub where Potter tried to hide from him, as if they were still enemies, and then Potter had said that he didn't want to _bother _Draco.

And now Potter looked at Draco and spoke that bloody little sentence, as if he didn't know _perfectly well _why Draco was upset.

Draco boiled over.

"You fucker," he snarled, and strode up to Potter so that he was in his breathing space and Potter was staring almost at his own hands trying to keep Draco's in view, "did it ever occur to you that if I was entertaining friends, you would be welcome? Because you're _one _of them? And even if Scorpius was going to bed, he'd be thrilled to see you, and the only problem would be to get him to stop chattering and _stay_ in bed once I'd put him there?"

Potter lifted his head, and a complicated stubborn expression crossed his face. "I didn't want to interfere with that," he retorted. "The things you choose to do for your son. His bedtime, or the way you discipline him. If I would have interfered, then it's a good thing I didn't choose to show up."

Draco seized Potter's shoulders and bent towards him. Potter didn't appear impressed that Draco was breathing fast enough to rival a dragon himself. He simply stared, and Draco supposed that that kind of stare would have knocked people back on their heels when Potter was an Auror.

"You are such an idiot," Draco whispered. "It isn't interference. I would never have called you over and asked you to help me with Scorpius if I thought it was."

"You didn't know who you were writing to, remember?" Potter's eyes were almost red in the firelight.

"You—" Draco was so furious it was hard to form the heat into words. "I _meant_, the time that I wrote to you and told you to come over to my house and help me with Scorpius. And you came, and you stayed and had dinner with me and him. Are you only ever going to think yourself welcome when I explicitly invite you? Am I ever going to get a request for a visit, or are you going to hold up this fucking _beacon _of virtue every time and tell yourself and me that you're only doing it for our own good?"

Potter gave him an honestly bewildered glance, and Draco swore under his breath. He released Potter and turned his back, kicking at some of the ashes that had fallen from the fireplace onto the floor. They scattered, but that didn't make Draco feel much better.

"Listen to me," Draco breathed, not looking at Potter this time. If he looked, he would get overwhelmed again by how idiotic Potter was and just want to grab him and shake him again. As tempting as that was, Potter couldn't listen if he was grabbed and shaken. "Friends can ask favors. I want you to. I want you to ask to come over and have me listen to your woes sometimes, as well as you doing it for me. I want you to ask to play with Scorpius as well as help him. He adores you, you know."

"I don't—I don't know why," said Potter, and then he made what he obviously thought was a joke. "Careful, Malfoy, or I'll think you adore me, too."

Draco spun, and this time the temptation was too strong. He walked back to Potter, the slow, deliberate, stalking steps that he had never used with anyone after he was out of Hogwarts. Potter blinked and stared, and didn't try to move away when Draco reached out and put a hand on his chest, above his heart, although that could have been shock rather than longing.

"Yes," Draco whispered.

"Yes, they could think it," said Potter, and arched his neck back like a nervous horse. "I know that, I think that, because I just said it, remember?"

Draco watched him with a sardonic smile. He had been the uncomfortable one and the vulnerable one for a while, wanting a closer connection with Potter without knowing what kind of connection he wanted or what to name it or how to get it. But now, even if Potter rejected him, he knew he would be the stronger. At least _he _knew what he wanted, and he wasn't flailing around in Muggle pubs where he had no business being to try and find it.

"Come _on_," said Potter suddenly. "I tricked you. I lied to you. You can't possibly—"

He fell silent, staring at Draco. Draco just shrugged. "I had perhaps the most dysfunctional marriage of anyone I know who was married," he said. "Pansy complains about her husband all the time, but at least she's stayed married. Do you know how little Astoria and I cared about each other? And I could have destroyed my relationship with my son for all I knew about raising him. I don't think that it's nonsense to like the person who saved me from that." He paused. "Maybe adoration is a little strong."

"And you saved Teddy," Potter said. "It's not like you owe me anything."

"Hard as it may be for you to believe," Draco said dryly, "this isn't about debts and owing. This is about wanting."

"You only think—surely part of this comes from school and the obsessions we had with each other then?" Potter sounded like he was pleading.

"Maybe it does," Draco said. "I find myself uninterested in tracking emotions to their origins. What _matters _is that I want you to come over when you find yourself in need of a friend. I want you to play with Scorpius because you'd like to, because you want to be around children, rather than just because you think that he needs someone to heal him. I want to get to know you and talk to you about something other than the parts of our pasts we already knew about." He would be interested in getting to know more about the parts of Potter's past that he _wasn't _familiar with, the parts Potter had talked about in Healer Brandeis's office.

Potter still looked as though someone had hit him on the head with a fairly large hammer, minus the probable leakage of blood and brains. Draco wasn't putting a leakage of common sense past him, though. "I never—I never even thought of this."

"I know," Draco said. "Start thinking."

"You didn't," said Potter, and swallowed loudly, "say anything about more than friendship just now. But I thought you were implying it."

Draco stepped lightly back, not taking his eyes from Potter's. "I'd like that," he said. "But I want it returned willingly. I _demand _friendship, because you agreed to that. Anything else can wait."

Potter's face became slowly more thoughtful. Then he nodded. "I—I did think of coming to you," he said. "Honestly."

"Then what you need to do," Draco said slowly and deeply, "is to get beyond the thinking."

Potter studied him, and then nodded again. "Whatever's here," he said. "It's not going away."

"No," Draco said, able to relax now it seemed that Potter was acknowledging that. "It won't."

Potter leaned back against the wall, then smiled a little. "All right. Thanks, Malfoy. Even if you did spoil my chance of picking up a date or something in that pub."

"Why _wouldn't _I want to ruin it?" Draco drawled, and had the satisfaction of seeing Potter blush almost as fiercely as Draco had spoken, before.

"All right," Potter repeated. "Thanks."

It wasn't entirely clear where they would go from here, any more than it was what Potter was thanking him for, but Draco was satisfied that at least they were on the road.


	34. Arrangements

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Thirty-Four—Arrangements_

Harry opened his eyes the next morning to an irritated pecking noise. He sat up, shaking his head, and reached for his glasses. He couldn't remember the last time he had slept this late.

An owl hovered just beyond the windowpane, tapping again, and hooting in anger. Harry stood up and slowly made his way over to the window, opening it with a feeling that the owl would dissolve just as he touched the message on its leg and it would reveal itself as nothing more than a realistic dream.

Instead, though, the owl soared into the room the moment the window was open and ruffled its feathers hard, staring at him. Harry let it land on the perch and stood there, blinking slowly, until he saw the owl extend its leg. He didn't want to try and relieve it of its burden until then. He was dazed, his sleep tattered across his mind by the sudden awakening, and he didn't need a peck on his head like the window glass had got.

The note was from Malfoy, and Harry hated the telltale way his heart quickened the moment he read it.

_Potter, in all the excitement yesterday, I forgot to give you the message from Andromeda that was the original reason I sought you out in the first place. She wants you to come back and visit her and Teddy. I believe she's ready to apologize, although she didn't confess her deepest heart to me._

Malfoy hadn't signed it. Harry scowled. The arrogant _git _had no right to assume that Harry would simply recognize his handwriting, even though it seemed that was exactly what he'd done.

The owl gave a threatening hoot and stare. Harry didn't know why Malfoy wanted a reply to a message so simple, but he must, or the bird—as arrogant as _he _was—would already have gone on its way. He sighed and plodded into the next room to retrieve parchment and ink.

He couldn't think of what to write at first, but finally, he decided that it would be something as simple as Malfoy's message to him had been. It wasn't as though Harry _owed _him any more than that.

_Thank you for letting me know. I'll stop by Andromeda's house as soon as I can._

He tossed the letter at the owl, which caught it and sat staring at him for a minute longer. Harry stared back, then reached for his wand, which was on the bedside table where he kept it most of the time.

Before he could touch it, the owl was skimming out the window, wings widespread and feet tucked under its tail as though it had always meant to go in that direction and had only stayed so long out of an obligation to him.

Harry managed to grin, once. But the next second, he felt as though he had been plunged into cold water, and awakened out of sheer shame. Had he _really _been about to curse an owl? Really?

Harry shook his head and turned away. He had things to do. A shower. At least a few hours in the office, because there were some people who would come if only to have the prestigious Harry Potter treating their children. A visit to Andromeda that afternoon. But first a trip to the shops, so he would have a little gift for Teddy, a small apology for neglecting him for so long.

Any thinking about Malfoy—especially, any thinking about Malfoy and the conversation they'd had last night—could wait.

* * *

"This is _rich_."

Draco buried his head in his hands. He should have known better than to make any confession of his problems to Blaise, he thought. He _did _know better. What had possessed him, that he'd told Blaise about Harry? And then Blaise had looked at him with that little frown he had and asked why it was Potter in particular that Draco was having these problems with, and then the rest of it had come out.

Since then, Blaise hadn't stopped laughing.

Draco turned violently away from Blaise and stared out the window that looked into the gardens. There was a lot of mud there and few flowers, right now. The elves were replanting the flowerbeds and were busy darting back and forth, waving their hands and floating bulbs and pots in the air and making small shovels dig frantically under their command. But at least it was something to watch that wasn't Blaise's laughing face.

"Are you done yet?" Draco finally asked between gritted teeth, when the whoops behind him had lessened once, and then broken out in helpless snorts once again.

"No," Blaise gasped, and whooped again. He did sound as though he'd tried to stop, Draco acknowledged rigidly, still staring out the window, but that wasn't the same thing as actually managing to do it. And Draco was losing patience.

"I'm so glad that finding your best friend has conceived a hopeless passion for a Gryffindor is so amusing to you," Draco finally said, when Blaise had reached for a handkerchief and started cleaning up the tears of laughter that had gathered around his eyes. "Instead of sympathy, you offer me _this_." He waved his hand at Blaise.

"I'm sorry," Blaise gasped, and Draco could have believed that if he hadn't shot a sly glance at Draco and immediately had to look away again as his lips started twitching. "I don't _enjoy _laughing at you, Draco. It's just—"

"Bollocks."

"Yes, all right," said Blaise, and held up a hand that vibrated a little with his amusement. "But you have to admit that it is pretty bloody funny. All this time, I thought Theodore was imagining it."

"Imagining what?" Draco's hands closed into fists. He hated the thought that his best friends had been talking about him behind his back.

"This attraction that he insisted you had to each other." Blaise glanced at him with glinting eyes and then hastily lowered his eyelids again, looking far too pleased with himself. "He says that he saw it in the way you couldn't let go of your enmity against Potter in school, and then the way you discussed Potter with him a few weeks ago. I laughed at him, because you've changed a lot since school, even though Theo hasn't been here to see it happen. But I reckon—I reckon he was right."

Blaise looked as if his throat was trembling again, and Draco broke in with an icy smile. "How inconvenient for Theo that Potter had no idea of being attracted to me at all until I spoke to him." _And inconvenient for me, as well. _But Draco wasn't about to confess that aloud, not when one revelation had provoked this idiotic response from Blaise.

"Oh." Blaise flopped his hand around again. "He said something about Potter following you during sixth year, and that was the basis of Potter's attraction. And if Potter keeps coming over to your house now and talking to you, it has to be strengthening."

Draco sighed and got up for more tea. He could have had a house-elf fetch it, but they were all busy in the garden, and he needed a short holiday from Blaise. "He comes for Scorpius. That's the truth that Theodore's missed out of that farrago of gossip."

"Why?"

Draco waited until he was back out with the tea to answer that. He could hardly tell Blaise about Potter's inability to have children. "Because he divorced his wife without a child. Honestly, I think the only reason they stayed together as long as they did is because Potter wanted children, and when Weasley didn't want them within the same amount of time…" He shrugged, keeping his face bland.

"You're keeping track of how long they were together?" Blaise wagged his eyebrows at Draco. "He's told you the intimate secrets of his marriage?"

Draco rolled his eyes. "The first is public knowledge. As for the second, no. But I did ask him for help with Scorpius, once I saw how good he was with my little cousin. He's been perfectly pleased to come over and shower Scorpius with love and attention."

He broke off a second later, flushing, but the damage was done, if the way Blaise winked at him and crowed was any indication. "And you wish he would shower _you_ with some love and attention instead, right? Right?"

Draco sighed. "It's not that simple."

Blaise shrugged. "When you spend your formative years watching desire overcome lots of men's good sense, it seems simple enough."

"No," said Draco. "Not even because of our pasts. I do know—I've made him understand, now, the kind of connection I want. But he looked at me as blank as an unfinished wall. He'd obviously never considered dating a man before, never mind me." He tugged at his hair again, ignoring the fact that it would tell Blaise a lot about his mood. "So it's going to take a long time, if it happens at all."

"You could make it happen," said Blaise.

Draco narrowed his eyes at him. "If you're going to suggest some of the seduction potions your mother used, forget it."

Blaise put a hand over his heart. "Would I suggest seduction potions when it came to the love of your life, Draco? Of course not!"

"Stop it," said Draco, and this time he put enough force in his voice that Blaise broke off and nodded soberly.

"No, I meant it a different way," he said. "He comes over here for Scorpius? Invite him over more often. Pretend that it's just for Scorpius. And then when he comes and your son is behaving beautifully—if he does—then you can say you just wanted him to be able to spend time around a calm child. Then romance him."

"You think I know what romance is?" Draco shook his head. He had grown up with parents who were quiet about their love for each other; Draco knew it was there, but it burned like lava far underground, not a fire on the surface. Narcissa and Lucius would have considered that vulgar. And as for his marriage, it had been arranged like a business contract, and ended much the same way. "Scorpius is the only path to his heart that I know."

Blaise put a dramatic hand over his eyes. "How many times did we make fun of Gryffindors and their longing for romance, Draco? You must know _something_ about what they want, what they like. Think of it. Then romance him."

"Harry's different," said Draco, and looked into his tea, away from the mocking, breathless look on Blaise's face. "No, I mean it, shut up, he _is_. I don't think he would care about most of the things that are stereotypical, like flowers and sweets. He might think the less of me for sending them."

"But what about a romantic candlelit dinner?" Blaise swung his foot and bit on his scone, which Draco had offered him out of some misguided hospitality, in what looked like an excess of delight. "You have to admit that you can't go wrong with a romantic candlelit dinner. Here, to make it more special. You could lead him in and take away his cloak, or whatever else it is he wears when he comes over here. Maybe it won't be much."

"_Blaise_," Draco interrupted, and his face was on fire. He hoped to make his tone warning enough that Blaise would drop it, but he evidently was too taken with his little "vision" to do more than give Draco a distracted smile.

"So then you could sit him down at a table, and flutter your eyelashes at him the way I've seen you do at me and Theo a few times." Blaise shook his head in what looked like amusement, and which Draco thought was much more dangerous than that. "There are times I've thought about giving it a go, but that would ruin a most excellent friendship. And then you would put a steak in front of him. No, wait, slices of cut fruit. Because that way you have an excuse to feed it to him with your fingers. A bit messy to do that with steak—"

"That's enough," said Draco. This time, he made his voice quiet instead of snappish, and that seemed to work. Blaise turned and looked at him attentively. "I'm not going to do any of those things."

"You don't want to romance him, then?" Blaise clucked his tongue and looked, for a moment, extremely like his mother, an impression Draco could have done without. "That's an opportunity lost, then."

"You don't _understand_," Draco said, and could have bitten his tongue a moment later. He sounded like a wretched, whiny teenager, and he no longer wanted to be that. Or didn't ever want to be that. It was hard to change the past, though. "Listen. First, I would need Potter to get over this utter blankness he has at the thought of dating a man. He would only run if I tried to romance him when he's not over that. Second, it would be nice if he _asked _to come over here sometimes, instead of waiting on an invitation."

"Oh, I see." Blaise leaned his elbows on the table and smiled at Draco. "You want him to be more forward. You don't want to do all the work."

"Blaise…"

"I can't blame you," said Blaise. "Those high-maintenance people who demand that I do all the work are no fun, either."

"You're the high-maintenance one," Draco snapped, his spine tingling with the unfairness of this remark. It wasn't as though Harry was even high-maintenance. If anything, he was the sort of tedious person who would claim that he was satisfied with a lot less than he deserved. "You were the one who told me that you made Belinda go and get you cut rose petals in _December_."

"It would have proved she really loved me," said Blaise, and his face became mournful. "If she'd done it. Alas."

Draco groaned and leaned back, shaking his head. "Why are you teasing me like this?"

"Because," said Blaise solemnly, "it's _utterly hilarious._"

"I don't find it so," said Draco. And it seemed that he'd finally managed to hit the right tone, because Blaise leaned back in his chair and looked at Draco with a kindlier eye.

"I know," said Blaise. "But you're taking on like a schoolboy with his first love—"

"I am not _taking on_."

"And it's hilarious," Blaise continued blithely. "You know what you have to do. You never did it with Astoria, and you probably wouldn't do it if you were courting a Slytherin, but you have to do it with Potter, and you just don't want to. That's all. That's the only problem."

"What do I have to do, then?" Draco muttered, unable to stop feeling sulky and like he was struggling against a binding, but it was all very well for Blaise to smile at him like that, and he wasn't the one who was in the position of explaining the notion that men could date to a Gryffindor.

"You have to romance him," said Blaise. "Forget about candlelit dinners, if you want. And flowers and sweets and House stereotypes and all the rest of it. You can best romance him by showing him that you're date-worthy." He picked up his teacup and bowed to all corners of the room as though an invisible crowd was ready to surge to its feet and applaud.

"Date-worthy," Draco said flatly.

"Date-worthy." Blaise took a coy sip from his teacup and then ducked his head, watching Draco with wide eyes. "Do you like that word? I just made it up myself."

Draco felt his mouth crack in a smile, and then he couldn't hold onto his temper. He had to shake his head and say, "Yes, Blaise, you would know how to go about it. But you still don't have the history that I do with Potter, and he doesn't seem all that interested in getting to know the real me."

"Say that you have to invite him over once more," said Blaise. "Then ask him what he wants to do—and don't let him just sublimate it in playing with Scorpius, or whatever else he would suggest. Ask him. It has to involve spending time with you, so if he plays with Scorpius, then he has to play with you, too."

Draco's face heated a little, and Blaise leered at him.

"Yes, I thought that would appeal to you," said Blaise, and his voice trembled as if he was about to laugh at Draco again. He managed to swallow it down, and continued softly. "The worst he can say is no, right? And then you do something else. You decide that it's worth waiting for him to ask, or you ask for his advice about Scorpius, or you decide that he's not worth it after all and go and find something else to do."

Draco sat back and thought about that. He _did _want Harry to show more of an interest in him; it wasn't in Draco's nature to pursue someone unwilling, even someone he rather admired. But one question wouldn't hurt, and once he got Harry in his house and away from Scorpius for a while, then he would be able to judge better exactly what he was feeling.

"Yes," he said, and smiled at Blaise. "I'll ask him. Occasionally, you have a good idea and earn your keep for all the other days that you _don't _have one and I have to invite you over anyway."

Blaise laughed and finished his tea. "You would have gone mad with boredom before now if you didn't have me around, Draco." He flicked an elegant finger at Draco. "And you would have never decided what to do about Potter. You would have sat here until the Manor fell in around your ears, and always wondered if you should ask him or not, and whether it was worth doing."

Draco narrowed his eyes, but said nothing, because there was no way that he could express what he was feeling without Blaise twisting his words. Draco thought they'd had more than enough of that for today.

As it turned out, he never had the chance to ask Harry the way he'd planned to, but only because something wonderful happened instead.

* * *

"You don't seem _here _with me."

Harry turned to Andromeda, wondering what she wanted him to say. He had come over with the gift for Teddy, a book it turned out he already had, but had nodded at and thanked Harry graciously for anyway. And then Andromeda had said she had to brew a potion that couldn't wait, so they were standing in her lab. Andromeda was picking through a collection of flat red and purple roots on the table in front of her and chopping them up, although Harry didn't know how she kept track of what one she needed at the moment or even which one was which. They all looked the same to him.

"I'm sorry about getting the wrong book for Teddy," Harry said stiffly. He'd already apologized twice, once to Teddy and once to her, and he was getting tired of it. "I've had a lot on my mind, but I did come here because I wanted to see Teddy. And you," he added, when Andromeda's waiting silence grew heavy.

"It's not the book," Andromeda said, and gave him a glance as she tossed another handful of shredded red root into the cauldron. "Or not _only _the book. There's also the fact that you keep staring off into the distance and giving me the wrong answers to my questions."

"I'm not good at Potions, all right?" Harry jammed his hands into his pockets and wandered off towards the golden cauldron hanging on the wall. He could at least make faces at his reflection in the side.

"They weren't about Potions."

Harry shut his eyes and leaned his forehead against the cauldron. It was cool and soothing against his skin. "I don't know what you want me to say," he whispered. "That I'm sorry? That I shouldn't have let your remark about family hurt me the way it did? Those aren't things I can say."

"Tell me what you're thinking about." From behind him, Harry heard a tapping sound like an egg being shelled against the side of the cauldron.

Wondering for a moment what she had that could sound like an egg, but not caring enough to turn around and check, Harry exhaled hard. "Lots of different things."

"What's making you so distant? Now, specifically. What were you thinking about when you came over and barely responded to Teddy?"

Harry sighed again. "Malfoy told me something strange, and I don't know what to do about it."

A pause. "What could he have told you? I only asked him to give you the message about me wanting to see you."

Harry hesitated. But if he and Malfoy had an argument, or started dating, or anything in between, it would be impossible to hide it from Teddy and Andromeda.

"He said that he wants to—that he feels something romantic for me," he said. There. Now it was out there, and someone else could help him deal with it.

Silence, a silence so long that Harry finally turned around to see what Andromeda was doing. She was leaning with her hands on the edges of the cauldron and staring at him, was what she was doing. Harry felt a brief satisfaction that he had at least shocked her the way that Malfoy had shocked him.

"Really?" Andromeda whispered, and then straightened herself up with a shake. "No, of course I can see that's true, but what are you going to do about it?"

Up until now, Harry would have said, "Nothing," or, "Sit and think." He still didn't know what to think of Malfoy's wild ideas, and it would take him a long time to pick them out and untangle them.

But he rather thought that he'd like to make his own decision, and there was a shadow of judgment in Andromeda's eyes, or maybe her face, or maybe the way she angled her body away from him. Or maybe it wasn't there at all, and Harry was just imagining it.

What mattered was that he thought it was there, and in the meantime, he wanted to make a stand for himself. Maybe he had to think about it some more, maybe he had to wait on Malfoy's invitation, but he and Malfoy should be the ones who decided that, not someone who had made a mistake and might make another one.

"Ask him if I can come over for dinner," Harry said, and he felt better the instant he said that. He knew that it might all go horribly wrong. But at least it would be an _action _that could go horribly wrong. It wasn't the same as the sitting and staring at the walls that he had done for a few evenings before yesterday, when he'd gone out.

Andromeda hesitated, then said, "That might be good," and started brewing again.

_Yeah, _Harry acknowledged for the first time, looking sideways at himself in the golden cauldron and wondering what he might look like if someone was standing next to him. _It might be._


	35. A Rare and Wondrous Thing

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Thirty-Five—A Rare and Wondrous Thing_

"You don't need to look as though I smacked you in the face with a hammer. Or even a wet fish." Potter's voice was loud and demanding, the way Draco once would have identified with a fight about to happen between them. "I'm just asking for an invitation to dinner at your house. That's _all _I'm asking."

Maybe he intended to imply that he wasn't asking for a date or even to spend time with Draco alone away from Scorpius. Draco didn't much care. What mattered was the asking in the first place.

Unless…

"Your friends didn't put you up to this, did they?" he demanded, leaning forwards, while Potter gave him such a blank look that it was clear he hadn't followed Draco's line of reasoning at all. "They probably think you need to get out more, just like I do. It wasn't their idea? Or Andromeda's?"

Potter rolled his eyes. "If Ron thought I was in my right mind, or would listen to him, he would probably be urging me to run the other way. And Andromeda's drawn her own conclusions about this, but she didn't share them with me. I just wanted to ask you on my own, for my own reasons." By the end of that little speech, his jaw was clenched, and his hand twitching off to the side. "Unless you would prefer I didn't come over, of course. And you were just kidding when you said—"

Draco surprised himself, and Potter he thought, by laughing. "Listen to us," he said. "We are both a pair of suspicious, paranoid bastards, aren't we? And only today I was calling you by you first name in front of Blaise, and now I'm back to thinking of you as Potter again." He slumped back on his knees, chest aching with hilarity and exhaustion. "I'm beginning to think that maybe someone else _should _take over guiding us, because it's clear neither of us has a clue as to our best interests."

It still took longer than it should, but Potter—Harry—smiled finally. "Fine," he said. "Does that mean I can have a dinner invitation for tonight?"

Draco thought about asking for tomorrow night instead. He hadn't planned anything special for tonight, and he hadn't thought about having Scorpius in a different place.

But if Draco knew Harry (and he thought he was beginning to), then any hint of special treatment would only make him run away. He'd had enough of special treatment, he'd said. He would probably like a quiet, ordinary dinner with Draco and Scorpius best, the sort he'd had when Draco first asked him to come over and help with Scorpius.

"Yes," said Draco firmly. Harry's smile, which had started to waver, came back. He nodded and said something Draco couldn't make out in the sudden splutter of sparks and soot that meant the end of the Floo conversation. Something like, "I'll bring…"

Draco shook his head. He wondered what in the world Harry thought he could bring. It was on _Draco _to provide the food. That was what an invitation to dinner _meant_.

_I hope that he won't come over and then spend the whole evening trying to be self-sufficient, _Draco thought. He knew Harry was pretty good at standing in his own way, but that would be a new one even for him.

* * *

Harry had passed the shop plenty of times, since it stood near one end of Diagon Alley, but he'd never gone in. Even now, he hesitated before he pushed open the door and stepped inside under the tinkling bell. The owner was supposedly an inveterate gossip. This would probably give him enough food for months.

But Harry had learned, once, that it was polite to bring a bottle of wine with you when you were a guest. So he had to.

The shop was called Wondrous Wines, and Harry stood there for a second, looking uncertainly around. There were shelves and barrels and pigeonholes like the ones where Snape used to store Potions vials. There were narrow aisles that led back into a sweetly-scented darkness. Harry wondered if it was the smell of wine. He wondered if he'd know how to tell.

"How may I—_well. _Mr. _Potter_."

Harry hid a grimace and turned to face Hector Pincushion, the owner of Wondrous Wines. He was a tall man with a stomach that projected in front of him, but otherwise, he didn't look fat at all. He had bottle-blue eyes and a hungry smile that widened as he looked at Harry. Harry wondered if he could tell how clueless Harry was.

"I need a bottle of wine to take over to dinner tonight," said Harry abruptly. His heart was hammering. He had forgotten how hard this was, these casual social interactions. He really hadn't had many except with people he already knew in the past three years. All the strangers he had met were through work, and he knew how to behave _there_.

"Certainly." Pincushion made a little bow, touching the tips of his fingers together without taking his eyes from Harry. "What will the dish be?"

"I don't know," said Harry. He was about to say house-elves were going to prepare it, but he managed to stop himself in time. Everyone—well, everyone that had ears—knew Hermione disapproved of house-elves by now, so this would reveal that he wasn't dining with his friends.

"That does make it harder," said Pincushion, with such a disapproving smile at Harry that Harry opened his mouth to apologize before he thought about it. Then he clamped his lips shut and gave Pincushion a tight little shrug.

"Well, that's why I came to the best, right?" Harry murmured. He hoped he wouldn't pay for this later, but right now, he mostly wanted Pincushion to stop staring at him and give him a bloody bottle of wine so he could get out of here. "You can match a wine to a nice dinner without knowing what kind of food it is."

"I might be able to do that," Pincushion agreed, in a hoarse whisper. "But you understand, my best wines are expensive."

"I can pay," Harry said with solid surety, touching his pouch of Galleons on his belt. In time, the pinch of resigning his job at the Ministry would catch up with him, but for now, he still had enough savings for something like this.

"I wasn't talking about that kind of payment," Pincushion whispered, and gave him another disapproving look. "What I do here is magic, straightforward spells. It takes skill, of course, but part of the skill is knowing what spells to cast in the first place. And the use of those spells _costs_."

Harry stood straight and stiff. The look in Pincushion's eyes made him, absurdly, want to snap that he already had one person interested in dating him, and that person was trouble enough.

But Pincushion couldn't possibly want him. Harry hadn't met many people who did. What they wanted was the notoriety of being seen with him, or the ability to brag in front of their friends that they had slept with someone famous.

Harry hadn't met a whole lot of people, period, who wanted to cope with not only his fame but the mess in his head. He wondered if Malfoy would be one if he knew everything that Harry thought and reacted to.

"I want a look into your head," Pincushion murmured. "A private memory. It goes along with the wine. It goes _into _the wine, and adds to the exquisite taste."

Harry stared at Pincushion with his mouth open for a second. The only time he had heard of something even _close _to that was when Snape had handed Harry his memories as he was dying, and at least they had only come out partially through Snape's mouth. Harry hadn't had to _drink _them.

"Are you mental?" Harry asked.

Pincushion moved back and folded his arms. "You asked what the price would be for a good wine," he said, his voice muffled. "What kind of shop do you think I run? There's no way I can recommend a wine that would go well with everything without knowing the food. But the memory alters the wine's taste to whatever it needs to be. It's magical. Of course it is."

"I thought it was knowledge," Harry said, feeling oddly disappointed. Ever since he had come into the wizarding world, he had loved and admired magic, but he didn't want it in everything he touched. He'd like to have a free corner here and there.

"No," said Pincushion. "Unless you'd like to tell me what you're eating, then I suppose you'll be leaving without a bottle."

"I suppose I will," said Harry, stiffening his back. He had wanted a bottle, and he still thought it was rude not to bring one; Vernon and Petunia had mentioned it often enough. On the other hand, maybe that was a Muggle tradition that had no particular force in the wizarding world. Harry would have to hope so, and that Malfoy wouldn't think he was rude. "Good-bye." He turned to the door.

"Wait!"

Harry looked back, curious. Maybe Pincushion was going to tell him asking for a memory had been a sales tactic and recommend a wine, after all.

But Pincushion leaned towards him with his eyes shining and whispered, "It's not much, is it? Just a memory? It doesn't have to an intimate one. I want a memory no one knows about, except you. That's the only requirement."

"You're a little disgusting," said Harry, and let his lip curl. He would never be doing business with the bloke again. He might as well. "What makes you think I wouldn't have shared an intimate memory with my friends?"

_Except Malfoy, _Harry thought then, and felt his gut twist a little. _But he hasn't been my friend as long as the others have._

Pincushion seemed to have mistaken Harry's hesitation for a desire to share the memory with him, because he preened and smiled and whispered, "Just a little one."

Harry shook his head. "No," he said, a flat refusal that didn't allow Pincushion the luxury of misinterpreting it this time, and then opened the door and stepped out into the street. Briskly, he made for the Apparition point he could use to go to Malfoy Manor.

"You could have been a valued customer!" Pincushion shrieked down the street behind him. "But you aren't now! I'll make sure you can never buy a bottle of wine here again, Mr. Potter!"

Harry sighed. The only thing he regretted, really, was that that outburst made a few people turn to stare after him, and so did his anonymity no good at all.

_Wines aren't for me. I'll go to Malfoy Manor and hope Malfoy and Scorpius are glad to just have me, without the bottle._

* * *

Harry's frown was deep enough, when Draco opened the door, to make him narrow his eyes and say, "You could have told me that tomorrow night was soon enough, if you were going to resent coming tonight."

"No, he _has _to be here tonight!" Scorpius cried out, and he flung himself at Harry. Harry looked a little uncomfortable as he caught Scorpius in his arms, but it was that or drop him on the front step. Scorpius looked up at Harry and began to babble. "I can write now, and you have to see the story that I wrote! And you need to try the ice cream that Izzy made for me, and you need to come see my room, and you need to see the rooms that you could stay in!"

Harry blinked, maybe because of the force of the words—Draco knew Scorpius had never said so much to him at once before—and then looked at Draco. "You don't need to set rooms aside for me," he said hesitantly. "I mean, I know I might stay here eventually, but—"

"Yes, you will," said Draco, and it was easy to smile when Harry was giving him that bewildered look. "You might as well go ahead and choose them now, don't you agree?" But when Harry looked at him as if Draco was about to make him fight another Dark Lord, Draco relented and added, "It's a ritual all the guests go through. Blaise and Pansy have rooms here that they've chosen, too, although they practically never use them."

"Uncle Blaise does, sometimes," said Scorpius, and grabbed Harry's hand and tugged him hard in the direction of the dining room. "But you're not like Uncle Blaise."

"Why am I different?" Harry was bending down near Scorpius again, his face softened and changed. Draco cocked his head as he followed them into the dining room. He would have to get Harry alone later in the evening and see whether a trace of that expression survived when Harry was looking at Draco by himself, or if he was here only for Draco's son.

Draco didn't despair, though. Just because Harry started out wanting Draco for his son didn't mean he would only want that by the end of their—dating. Courtship. Romance. Whatever Draco wanted to call it when so few terms had been settled yet.

_ Or even by the end of the evening, _Draco thought, and he could smile sincerely when Harry glanced at him.

* * *

By the end of the meal—a bird Draco said was duck in a thick orange sauce—Draco still hadn't said anything about the wine, and Harry had relaxed. If he had committed a social crime, it wasn't a very serious one.

Indeed, somehow Harry had relaxed enough to call him _Draco _in his head.

But maybe that was because he didn't look much like the man Harry had always called _Malfoy _in his head, Harry thought, as he made oohs and ahs at Scorpius's room. It was big, a lot bigger than the rooms his kids with Ginny would have had, had they existed, or even than the rooms he had imagined for Ethan's children.

There had been a time when he could have described each and every dimension of those rooms.

Harry sternly shook away that thought, and instead admired the fine oaken wood paneling and brilliant colors and mounds of toys in Scorpius's room. There weren't a lot of heirlooms around, vases and that sort of thing, although he would have thought a Malfoy would want his son to grow up around them. Draco met his eyes, appeared to know what he was thinking, and muttered, "He broke them in his fits of temper, and after Izzy repaired them, I thought it was best for everyone's sake to move them out of here."

Harry snorted a laugh, and Scorpius, who was guiding Harry through the steps of a complicated spiral gameboard, glanced at him in what looked like exasperation. Harry coughed and tried to pay attention.

"Well, that's what happened," Draco said, with a shake of his head Harry thought conveyed amusement as much as exasperation, and leaned back against the wall to watch them. That was what Harry remembered best of the evening, afterwards: Draco listening to a description of a game that he must be deeply familiar with, and always watching.

Finally, Scorpius had almost exhausted the delights of his room, and his eyelids were drooping enough that Draco said, "I think we should save any more playing with Harry until after you've slept."

Harry jolted. He had known Draco was probably going to call him by his first name, but it was still like a flash of heat through his body when Draco actually _did _it. He eyed Draco sideways, and Draco gave him a small smile and turned away.

"I want to," Scorpius began indignantly, but his challenge didn't last long. He was swaying on his feet, his head nodding down so his chin touched his chest. A second later, he sighed, and sat down next to his bed, his brow falling against his sheets.

"Yeah, that's what I thought," said Draco, and turned his head. That in itself must have been a summons, because a few house-elves appeared and began to bustle around putting away the toys and turning down the bed. One picked up Scorpius and hovered him gently in the direction of the bedroom. Harry thought that elf was Izzy, the one who also tended to bring the pudding at dinner.

"Come," said Draco, and locked eyes with Harry.

Harry opened his mouth to say that he'd thought Scorpius would be part of the tour, and he could wait, and even, wouldn't it be _better _to wait until they had Draco's son between them to break up the awkward intensity that burned there? He thought a child like Scorpius, who demanded constant attention from both his father and everyone else, was one of the best defenses he could have.

But then Harry curled his lip at himself. He had come here, in part, to find out what the tension meant, not to hide from it. What would he be if he cringed away from it and whined now?

He nodded. "Let's go," he said, and listened only a minute to make sure that Scorpius was snoring from the bathroom before he let Draco hold the door open for him.

* * *

The way Harry climbed self-consciously through the splendor of the Manor was enough to confirm for Draco that he'd been right. Whether it was due to the childhood trauma he had confessed to Healer Brandeis or for another reason, Harry was reluctant to ask for things, potentially even to _want _them. He looked at the carvings on the walls and the gold and marble, the things Draco had thought would most attract his attention, and then pulled his eyes away from them and looked in another direction instead.

Not that that helped much. The whole Manor was decorated (and over-decorated; Draco could admit that now as he would not have been able to when he was a child) with such magnificence that Harry usually only ended up gazing at some new item.

"You know," Draco said casually as he opened the door of the wing where the guest bedrooms and suites tended to lie, "you can have a room decorated any way you want."

Harry cast him a puzzled glance. "I assumed that. I mean, you didn't say I had to choose a certain one."

"I mean," said Draco, and abandoned subtlety, "you can have a big one. An expensive-looking one. A comfortable one. All those things you should have had when you were a child and were denied."

Harry stopped dead and turned around to face Draco. His eyes were so serious that Draco didn't think he was about to get complimented on his choice of house. "Why would you say something like that?" Harry whispered.

Draco blinked. "If you didn't want me being insightful about you, you shouldn't have let me sit in on that discussion you had with Healer Brandeis," he said simply.

Harry spent a moment with his eyes closed, his hand rubbing the back of his neck. Then he murmured, "Fine, but—I don't want to take anything away from you or Scorpius."

Draco pretended to look around, at least until Harry opened his eyes, then gasped and said, "You're right! I never thought about it before, but sacrificing one room in our obscenely large house will deprive us of some air that we might breathe each day." He folded his arms and nodded seriously. "I'm afraid we'll have to ask you to bring some bottled air with you the next time you visit."

He had his reward in the faint flicker of a smile over Harry's face, but Harry shook his head and said, "You don't have to give the room to me as a sort of reward, or bribe. I _do _want to explore what kind of—connection we might have. I'm not going to run away."

"I know that," said Draco. "And it's not a bribe. Didn't you hear us say that our guests often stay here?"

Harry lowered his head and spent a long second looking at his feet. "I know what Healer Brandeis would say about this," he whispered. "Probably. She would say that I'm looking for rejection where none exists, and I should think more about myself and work on my perceptions."

"Yes, that's what it is," Draco agreed quietly.

Harry looked at him piercingly, then relaxed and shrugged. "You'll have to forgive me," he said. "I simply—I'm not used to things like this."

"I got that," Draco said, and managed it dryly enough that Harry laughed. "In the meantime, shall we get on with choosing you a set of rooms? I think you know what you like, when you allow yourself to think about it."

Harry nodded and turned to scan the ceiling above him, which had a mosaic of wizards on white horses hunting a black unicorn. "Yes, but not this. No offense, it's just that it's a bit—overwhelming."

Draco chuckled. "Then let me show you other rooms that are quieter," he said, and led Harry down the corridor, introducing him to rooms as he went. "That's Blaise's room. That's Pansy's. You don't want that one, it's covered in silver and green. There's plenty down here that you might want, though…"

* * *

The moment Harry saw the room he knew he wanted, he fell in love.

It was quiet, decorated in subdued shades of blue and green, as though it was resting on the floor of a pond. Harry looked around and blinked when he made out the slightly curved walls that arched overhead, and then he looked down and saw the softly whorled designs of the floor. It looked as though he was walking on seashells.

"You like it," Draco said from behind him. His tone was a little irritating, the smug self-confidence instead of simply a question, but Harry chose to ignore his irritation for now.

"Yes," he said, and explored further into it. There was a single window, with a single cabinet in front of it, one made of lacquered dark wood with golden handles for the drawers. There were no other pieces of furniture. Harry didn't mind. That let him fill the room with his own imagined bed and pillows and tables.

"Then you can take it," said Draco, and something in the huskiness of his voice made Harry turn around.

He had to swallow visibly at what he saw in Draco's eyes. There was something so hot there, so heavy, clinging and pressing close, and only turning sharply away again to study the cabinet let Harry continue to stay in the same room with him. He wanted to run away from what that look promised.

Not because it was another man, or not really, he told himself, while his heartbeat and his blush both felt as though they were burning him. Not _really_. It was because he had last seen a look that thick and real in Ginny's eyes, and look how well _that _relationship had gone.

"Harry?" Draco asked quietly. "Do you somehow doubt my hospitality, or my word?"

"No," Harry murmured, keeping his head turned away.

"Well, then," said Draco, and his voice became a shade cooler. "I think I deserve an explanation."

Harry sighed and turned back. If he didn't want a useless argument—and it _would _be useless, since it was based on uncertainties of his own that he didn't really believe in—he had to tell Draco the truth now. "Listen. My marriage collapsed. I haven't seriously dated anyone since. Three years I've been—well, alone. Do you think I can really change that with you? Why would you? It's kind of an awful record."

Draco did more than relax; he almost shone with understanding. He nodded. "Well," he said. "Why don't we consider this room as yours for the moment, and we'll go downstairs and talk about this."

Harry hesitated once, then nodded in determination. They had to talk about it sooner or later, and this was the perfect time, without Scorpius to distract him.

_Or hide behind, _he admitted, and passed out the door, walking beside Draco, who waited for him, and made no move towards the staircase until Harry accompanied him.


	36. Like a Vampire's Bite

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Thirty-Six—Like a Vampire's Bite_

"Do you want wine? More of the pudding we had at dinner?"

"Nothing, thanks," said Harry, staring around the room that Draco had led him into. It was an incredibly wide room, looking as though it took up the whole ground floor of the house, although Harry had just walked through part of the ground floor that wasn't taken up by it, so he knew that was only an illusion. The walls were dark blue and glittered with a spangle of silver stars.

So did the floor. Harry took only one swift glance down at what he thought were tiles, or smooth, slick flagstones beneath his feet, then turned his eyes away. It looked as if he was standing atop an abyss filled with stars.

"I want you to be comfortable," said Draco, from near enough that Harry started and looked up. He'd thought Draco was on the other side of the enormous room, but instead, he stood not far in front of Harry, one hand on the back of an overstuffed chair, frowning. "You don't look as if you are?"

Harry cleared his throat. "I feel like I'm falling through space. Could you…?"

Draco blinked once, and then his face cleared. He didn't make fun of the way that Harry was reacting, the way Harry had thought he might. He simply drew his wand and tapped it once against the wall, and a softer version of blue flooded the room, making the floor opaque. "Better?"

"Yes, thanks," said Harry, and took the chair in front of the one Draco held. Draco sat down in front of him, smiling a little anxiously. Harry eyed him sideways and wondered why he was so nervous when his secrets weren't the ones on display.

Then he wanted to snort. _As if it wouldn't be a secret of a sort that he's interested in me. He's probably told some people, but it's not something he'd expect to announce in the streets, either._

"Good," said Draco softly, and leaned nearer. His eyes were avid on Harry's face, making Harry clear his throat a little. He was used to people looking at him like that only when they wanted to sell him something, or buy him. Draco didn't seem to notice his discomfort this time, though. "I want to know why you allowed me to stay when Healer Brandeis was talking to you."

Harry blinked. "I thought I answered that. I didn't think you'd spread the story around, and once I was talking, I got kind of caught up and didn't think of anything else."

Draco flushed, and Harry wondered if he should have admitted that. It made Draco sound like he wasn't worth much to Harry. But Draco was the one who said, "_Why _did you trust me? How did you know you could trust me?"

"I just—thought I could," said Harry, getting a little flustered. "You were the one who picked out the Mind-Healer for me. I thought you sincerely wanted to help me. Are you saying you didn't and I _shouldn't _trust you?"

"I'm saying that it's a little strange for someone to trust the one who was his rival in school and then set warlocks on him a few weeks before," said Draco in a soft voice, blinking rapidly. Harry decided that he wasn't the only one insecure one here. "I thought—I _hoped _it proved that you felt the connection between us as strongly as I did, and you were reaching out to me. But it didn't?"

"I wasn't thinking of it in those terms," said Harry. "Not at the time. Maybe now—yeah, now I can think of it that way."

Draco relaxed and smiled at him. Then he said, "You don't have to have a drink if you don't want one, but I feel the need." He snapped his fingers, and a house-elf popped up with a tray that held two glasses and a carafe of something the color of honey. Harry blinked a little when he saw it. It looked like juice, not wine.

"Will you join me?" Draco asked, as he laid his two fingers against the side of one sparkling, delicate-looking glass and the elf poured precisely that amount in.

Harry hesitated once. On the one hand, he wanted to. On the other, he didn't know if it was the best idea to get drunk in front of Draco. Merlin knew what would come out of his mouth.

But if he could trust Draco with his deepest secrets, he could probably trust him with any drunken confessions he made. He nodded. "Yeah."

The elf poured the same amount into the other glass, handed it to Harry, bowed solemnly to both of them, and vanished with the tray. Harry sipped at the wine and had to close his eyes for a moment, the intense taste of it washing around his mouth. It _was _sweet, though not as much as the honey it resembled.

"Good, isn't it?" Draco asked. "That's the kind of thing I want to give you if you'll let me, the luxuries and the sweets alike."

Harry opened his eyes and nodded. "I'll be more comfortable asking you about them now. That matters." He leaned back in his chair with his hands cupped around the glass and studied Draco. "What else did you want to talk about?"

"Whether you think you can date me. Whether you can be interested in a man." Draco hesitated as if he was about to leap off a cliff, and then blurted, "And that means we need to talk about the failure of your marriage."

Harry rubbed a hand along the back of his neck. It felt as though someone had dealt a burning slap to his cheek. "I don't—my marriage didn't fail because I was interested in another man, you know."

He started to add that he wanted to discuss the failure of Draco's marriage, too, if they were going to do this, but Draco was already speaking. "Was she?"

Harry took an angry swallow, realized there was nothing in his mouth and he looked like an idiot, and brought the wineglass to his lips. He allowed the wine to roll around on his tongue, not to "elaborate" the taste as one wine connoisseur had said to him at a party in the Ministry once, but to prevent himself from speaking too soon.

"She was," he finally said. "I mean, a man who could give her children. Which I couldn't. So you could see the basis of her interest."

Draco gave him a keen, cutting glance. "This is going to be very tiresome if you insist on defending her, and we spend all evening talking about her instead of you and me," he murmured.

Harry bristled. "Well, let's talk about me, then. I didn't want to adopt, although I did suggest it. I suggested Muggle methods. Ginny didn't want to use those. She—we both went too fast. If we'd managed to wait and let some time pass and talk about it rationally, as a couple, I would still be with her."

"Then I'm glad you didn't."

Harry whipped his head away. His voice came out dull and muffled, and he knew it. "Why are you _doing _this? We were getting along, and now—"

"Because we can't avoid fights forever," Draco said evenly. "And I want to make sure we can argue like normal people—like a couple, if you prefer to use that terminology—and not tear each other apart. If we can't, then we have some more work to do."

Harry nodded. "Right. I know that." At Draco's raised eyebrow, he scowled. "Honestly, I do. I just haven't been part of a couple in so long that I forgot it."

"I'm curious about that, too," said Draco, and took a sip from the honey-colored wine that, damn him, he seemed to be handling a lot better than Harry was. "Why did you wait so long to date someone? I would have thought you would want at least company, since you couldn't have blood children."

That was like a blow, too, but this time, Harry thought he managed to take it on the chin without breaking stride. "I was interested in dating, but I couldn't find what I was looking for."

"Do tell." Draco's eyes glinted at him over the wine-glass.

_When it's my turn, then he's going to get an interrogation, too, _Harry thought fiercely. But for now, he wanted to answer as honestly as he could. Maybe then Draco would see that this was a _problem_ they were dealing with, something knotty and complicated and without an easy solution. "Someone who would want me for me. Someone who would know the truth about me, all the truths, and not flinch from them."

Draco frowned slightly. "How could someone do that if you didn't tell them the truth?"

Harry shrugged. "I thought I'd get comfortable with them, they'd accept a few things about me that are uncomfortable but not as important as that, and then I could tell them the truth and they'd take it."

"Even if they wanted children?"

Harry rolled his eyes. "Hell, _I _want children. I just couldn't be with anyone who would want to do what Ginny had done."

"Which was?'

"We're going to end up talking about her, aren't we?" Harry muttered, and drained most of the rest of his glass. "Fuck."

Draco jumped into laughter as if stung there. "It doesn't have to be a painful process. I won't ask you to reveal any of her secrets. I just want to know what it was that really broke up your marriage. Only the revelation that you couldn't have children?"

Harry closed his eyes and tried to think back on the matters that had seemed so tangled and so pressing only a short while ago. "She wanted to have a blood child, too," he muttered. "But she wouldn't—she wouldn't consent to Muggle methods. What she wanted was to sleep with someone else, have his child, and then rear it as both of ours. With the other father involved, too. I think. Sometimes I think I misjudged that part." He pinched his nose and forced out some air and, he hoped, some spite. "I just couldn't do it."

"I couldn't, either," said Draco, his voice low and ugly. "I wonder how long she'd had someone else in her eye?"

Harry glared at him. "We can talk about my problems until the morning comes. Merlin knows even _that _might not be enough time, but I won't listen to you criticize her."

Draco lifted his head as if he wanted to show his throat to Harry, but the look in his eyes was pure challenge. "Careful, Harry, or I might get jealous and think that you still want her, instead of being able to want me."

"I would still be _able _to want someone else," Harry snapped. "But if this hadn't happened, I would still be with her. Hopefully the father of a big group of kids by now. You have to understand that."

"I understand that reality intervened," said Draco. "The way it did with my divorce, and the way that Astoria and I parted."

Harry jumped gladly on the new distraction. "Yes. How did _that _happen? Obviously it wasn't the same cause as broke up mine." He thought enviously of Scorpius sleeping upstairs. No matter what else happened, Draco had that joy. He wanted to know about Scorpius, more than he did about Astoria.

But he wanted to know about Draco, too, and so he sat back and sipped his wine and watched as Draco stared at his glass for a while, as if he would find the courage to speak in the side of the sparkling crystal.

* * *

_This is harder than it looks._

Which made Draco appreciate Harry's courage all the more, since he had launched into speaking with no preparation but Draco's questions.

But Draco had courage of his own, and he wasn't about to be defeated by something that he had _known _Harry would ask about. Maybe something that Draco even wanted to talk about, although he would have ignored the insinuation coming from anybody else.

So he drank the rest of his wine, and held out his glass so Izzy could pop up and fill it again, and then set it firmly down on the table beside him, instead of drinking from it anymore. Harry's eyes followed it down, and then came back to his face, full of an oddly expectant hope.

"Astoria and I were a match made by families and parents and pure-blood society, not love," Draco began. "I expect you know that."

Harry nodded. His eyes said he couldn't comprehend it, but then, even Draco still sometimes found it hard to believe he had been married for a while. As long as Harry understood what had happened and the sequence of events, that was all Draco really needed.

"So." Draco's throat ached, and he wanted to pick up the glass of wine again, but he had already had all he needed to tell the story fluently. "We quickly found out that we didn't even share enough of the same interests to regularly appear in society together. We thought that we could dance and discuss politics and make the right kinds of noises at the right kinds of people. Or perhaps I was the only one who thought that, and Astoria was already pursuing her dream."

"What does she do?" Harry asked.

"She runs a company called General Morgana, and works on all sorts of things. Research projects. Artifacts." Draco waved his hand. "I know she cares about them, and she needed to be free to pursue her dream."

"But what does that make of Scorpius?" Harry whispered. "And what about _your _dreams?"

Draco gave him a warm look that he thought Harry probably misunderstood, if the way he blinked and then checked the level of the wine in Draco's glass was any indication. Draco was just glad that someone had thought about his side of it, and decided to ask the question, for once.

"My dream was raising Scorpius to Malfoy standards," he said. "Pure-blood standards. And you saw how well that worked out. I was reduced to asking help from anyone who would respond to a desperate owl."

Harry only smiled, and didn't challenge Draco's characterization of him. "So both your dream and mine died, a little bit."

"Mine not as thoroughly as yours," Draco acknowledged, and finally let himself pick up the wineglass again. "I know now that the standards I was trying to impose on Scorpius were too hard for such a young child. That doesn't mean he can _never _live up to them or be a good Malfoy or a good heir or a good person, but I have to wait until he decides what he wants and see what place my standards have in his life."

Harry's eyes shone for a moment as though he was going to issue a challenge to that, and then he let his hand fall and only smiled. "True. Well." He hesitated for a long moment, during which Draco refreshed himself, and Harry only toyed with the stem of his glass as though he'd lost his taste for the wine. "What are we going to do now?"

Draco paused himself, then put the glass aside again. He needed courage for this, yes, but not the liquid kind that he had a few times used to such disastrous effect, such as on the day that Astoria had finally told him they needed to get divorced. "I think we need to talk about whether our dreams can be fulfilled a different way."

"How?" Harry blinked.

"You _can't _be that oblivious," said Draco flatly, and stood up. "The laws of the universe don't allow it."

Harry clutched the sides of the chair for a moment, looking at Draco as though he was stunned Draco was about to force the issue. Then he said, "Well, I mean, I don't see how I can have blood children."

"Not blood children," Draco said. "_A _child. _A _family. That's one of the things I can certainly offer you if you date me." He became aware of an aching tension in the center of his chest, and tried to smile it away. "Although I hope that you would consider dating me as one of the perks of the business, not only a burden you need to shoulder or shrug off."

Harry did freeze as though the laws of the universe had faltered, and then said softly, "Draco. You don't need to—to share Scorpius with me, or anything. Just like you don't _need _to invite me over. Or date me."

"And again, this isn't about needs, or some repayment," said Draco, and he stood there and waited for Harry to understand things. "This is about wants, about things I don't have to do, but want to do. About desires." He reached out and brushed his thumb along Harry's lips. "I want to know if you're going to continue putting me off and muttering about things that we need to do, or if you'll join me."

"Join you?" Harry's voice had gone up. "Where are you going?"

"Into the country beyond our broken marriages," said Draco softly. "Into the land where desires are the things that matter, and we fulfill them." He reached down and curled a warm hand around Harry's, a hand he knew was warm, and tugged a little, but not enough to lift Harry to his feet. "Will you join me?"

* * *

Harry stared at their joined hands, and for a second, the fear blew through him like a windstorm and he wanted to run away.

It was true that he'd faced more frightening things, including the end of his marriage to Ginny and what he had thought was a lifetime of being alone, without a family, but he had done those because he had to. Draco kept shoving away all thoughts of duty or necessity. He wanted Harry to do this because of desire.

_Did_ Harry have the desire to do it? That was the question.

He looked slowly up at Draco's face, at the faint, steady smile that beamed there, and the hand he had stretched out to the side as though he couldn't wait for Harry to clasp it and already wanted to beckon him on. But his other hand had stayed on Harry's, and he didn't act as though he was trying to hurry Harry up or as though he would be disappointed by Harry taking a while to decide.

_That's because he knows it can't be hurried. It has to be as slow as it takes. For as long as it takes._

Harry was shaking a little when he leaned forwards and left the couch of his own free will, when he let Draco pull him up. But he did it because he knew he wanted to.

And while he didn't know if this would work out or if it was the smartest move he'd ever made, he _did _know that he would regret it for the rest of his life if he let it go past. He'd had enough of wondering and mourning about things he couldn't change.

When they were face-to-face, Draco raised an eyebrow. "I believe it's traditional to do something with moments like these other than stand staring into each other's eyes," he said lightly.

Harry bristled a little and opened his mouth to say something, but Draco leaned in and kissed him lightly on the lips.

It was brilliant and hot and wondrous. Harry actually staggered a little from the force of it, and lifted his hand to touch Draco's hair, and then he _had _to touch it and hold onto it, because he thought he would have fallen over if not for the grip he had on it.

Draco pulled back a moment later, though, not seeming to care that Harry was tottering and wobbling where he stood. His eyes were full of challenge. It didn't take Harry as long to figure out why as he thought it once would have.

_Because he wants me to kiss him back. He wants me to _want _it._

And Harry didn't have much trouble proving that, not when his chest was aching and he had thoughts of—well, of lots of things that didn't include Scorpius or Ginny or blood children. For the first time in three years, he thought he wanted something more than he did the ability to have children.

He turned so that he could brace the back of his legs against the arm of his chair and kissed Draco thoroughly again. Draco made a sound that could have been amused or encouraging. Harry disliked the possibility that it was amused. He kissed him harder, sliding one arm into place around the back of his neck and not simply holding onto Draco's hair.

Draco swayed into it with his mouth open and his tongue reaching, longing. Harry felt a trickle of amazement thrill through him at that. Draco wanted him _that _much? He couldn't remember the last time someone had wanted him _that _much.

He tightened his grip, and licked Draco's tongue.

Draco moaned and suddenly pulled back from him, shaking his head a little, his eyes wide. "I didn't—I didn't think that you'd take it up that fast," he gasped.

"What can I say? I'm a quick study." Harry managed to smile and move back to run a hand through his hair. He felt a little winded. Maybe it wasn't a bad thing that Draco had ended this here for now, although Harry couldn't deny the disappointment that had flashed through him, either. "I—I think I might want to try this. Maybe being your—date." There was no other word he felt comfortable saying about it for now. "Helping you with Scorpius. Visiting the Manor sometimes."

"And Scorpius and I can come over to your house?" There was a shadow of challenge in Draco's eyes.

"You have been," Harry said, confused, thinking of their visit to Grimmauld Place.

"The place that you _live_," Draco said, and Harry snorted at himself and reached back for his wineglass. His hand was shaking. He steadied it for a moment, and then nodded.

"Of course. Come whenever you like."

Draco gave him a thin smile. "I might just take advantage of that invitation." He hesitated. "You're free to stay in your rooms for tonight."

_Rooms, plural, _Harry thought. Only in Malfoy Manor would he have that distinction. But that wasn't a bad thing, either. Only a different thing from what he was used to.

He spent a moment thinking about it, the amount of wine he'd consumed and the distance of the rooms Draco had given him from the wing where Draco and Scorpius slept, and then nodded. "I'd like that."

Draco's eyes flamed with triumph, and he inclined his head. "Then I'll see you in the morning." He kissed Harry chastely on the cheek and retreated out of the room as if he didn't trust himself.

But as Harry felt the wine burn down his throat and thought about what else had burned on his lips, he wasn't sure that it was _himself _Draco should distrust.


	37. Wavering Desires

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Thirty-Seven—Wavering Desires_

The next day, Harry woke up feeling as though he'd slept on silk. Well, maybe he had, if the sheets themselves were silken, but this went deeper and felt better. His limbs were warm and smooth and supple, and his head—

His head was _clear_.

It was surprising, and not just because he had drunk more wine last night than he had in a long time. Harry lay there, blinking and breathing. It felt as though clods of earth had fallen out of his ears and left him free to _think _for the first time in ages. He could see a sort of life he could have even without blood children.

He could see a family that might already exist and be his, if things worked out between him and Draco the way Draco wanted.

_Be honest. You want it too._

Harry shrugged. Well, he did, but the person who would need to make the ultimate decision about whether Harry was welcome in the family or not—as opposed to simply welcome in the _house_—was Scorpius.

Harry got up and stretched for long minutes before he thought about the bathroom. It was as spectacular as the rest of the rooms, covered in tile but heated from below by what sounded like hot, gurgling water when Harry bent down and put an ear to the floor. Harry stepped into the shower and examined the patterns etched into the glass for a second before he turned on the water.

He ended up snorting. They were all of dragons.

Harry bathed with gusto and washed his hair with more vigor than he'd had in a long time. He wasn't tearing through the shower so that he could go to work now. He was humming under his breath. He was enjoying the process of preparing to go downstairs and eat breakfast with someone, also more than he had in a long time.

Of course, in the past few years, he hadn't eaten breakfast with anyone except Ron, the times they were out early or overnight on cases, and then they usually grabbed some cheap Muggle food and ate in between Apparating. Before that, the only person had been Ginny.

Even that had changed, Harry acknowledged after a few seconds of bowing his head under the shampoo and investigating the damp strands of hair with his fingers to make sure no dirt was hiding behind them. He could breathe easily now, without pain at the mere sound of her name. He wondered what Draco would say to that.

Then he remembered what Draco had said last night, and winced. Best not to bring up Ginny at all. If he did have a new life and he was moving on, he should do it without dragging in continual reminders of the past.

Of course, to an extent, that was also going to depend on Draco. He had seemed more interested in the end of Harry's marriage than he should be, since he knew all about the main reason of Harry not being able to have children. He might sometimes ask about Ginny, and Harry would have to tell the truth. He couldn't lie.

_But_, Harry thought, as he turned off the water, _I also don't have to make her a villain or the center of the most joyful part of my life before it all went to hell. Maybe I can move on and have other joyful parts, now._

* * *

"Uncle Harry is still _here_," said Scorpius solemnly, when Harry came around the corner and sat down at their table.

Draco hid his smile behind his newspaper. He thought Scorpius's amazement was cute, but Scorpius was in the sort of mood this morning where he didn't want to be thought cute.

"Yes, I am," said Harry, and picked up his fork and dug into the plate of sausages in front of him. Draco had had the house-elves bring it on a whim; it wasn't his favorite, and Scorpius rarely ate more than a few. But from the way Harry was inhaling them, the sausages were something he enjoyed. Good. Draco would make sure to have them on a regular basis when he stayed over.

_And after he moves in? _

Draco rustled the newspaper to conceal his own discomfort, this time. He had no idea whether that would ever happen.

"Why did you stay?" Scorpius was currently asking. "I thought you would go back home."

Draco winced a little. The last thing he wanted to do was make Harry feel unwelcome, and he knew Harry would be looking for signs of that from Scorpius, just because he couldn't believe that someone would honestly want him in their home for good.

But Harry only said seriously, "I wanted to be with people. I spend a lot of time alone, you know. I live alone, and I can't visit my friends all the time."

Draco peeked around the paper. Harry held his eyes and nodded before he went back to eating. So the answer was sincere and for Draco's benefit, as well as Scorpius's. Draco eased back with a small smile. He could more than live with that. He could _celebrate _that.

"So you can spend time with me today," Scorpius said, and swallowed porridge fast enough to make himself choke. Harry reached across the table and patted him on the back before a house-elf could show up to do it. Draco hid another smug smile. "I need to draw a map, and you can help me."

"What kind of map?" Harry looked at Draco again this time, and Draco folded the paper and put it away.

"I thought it fitting that he should know the geography of the British wizarding world," he said, and picked up his spoon to eat the last of the yogurt off it. "It's the sort of thing he could learn at primary school, but I prefer to teach him myself."

Harry's eyes glowed with approval, and Scorpius interrupted impatiently, "I already know Hogwarts is in Scotland!"

Harry turned around with a small smile. "That's great, Scorpius. I can only stay for about an hour, though. Then I've got to go to work."

Draco swallowed his own disappointment. He had thought they would have Harry for longer than that. From the dismayed way Scorpius was pouting, he had thought the same thing, and he threw an imploring look at his father that Draco understood. It was a plea to make things work, and make Harry stay. Draco only shrugged back, and Scorpius faced Harry and pouted at him in turn.

"I really do have to," Harry told him, and then reached out and put his hand on Scorpius's shoulder. "But you're so cute that it makes me want to stay."

Scorpius pulled back and gave him a horrified look. "I am not _cute!_"

It was Harry's first real stumble with Scorpius, and Draco watched in interest to see how he got out of it. But Harry just went on calmly chewing, and said a second later, after he'd swallowed, "I think you're cute sometimes."

"Cute is for girls," said Scorpius. "And _babies_."

"Sometimes," said Harry, and went on eating again. Scorpius glared at him for a while, and then turned and gave a stiff little nod to Draco, not at all the way he usually asked to be excused from meals.

"Can I go practice with my map?" Scorpius asked. He shot Harry one more look, but Harry was involved with the _Daily Prophet _that Draco had discarded. Draco nodded, and Scorpius stood up and marched away from the table. Draco snorted to himself. Scorpius had never looked more Malfoy than right now, when he was the picture of offended dignity.

"I wondered what you would say to him when you realized how angry he was," said Draco.

Harry grinned at him. "The same sort of thing I did to Teddy when I was only teasing him and he took it the wrong way. Let him snap at me and blow it off, and he'll be all right in a few hours. At most," he added, and put the paper down. "Teddy was older than Scorpius then, so Scorpius will probably have a lesser attention span. Did you notice the story they put on the fourth page?"

Draco blinked and shook his head. Most of the stories that were interesting to him were the sort to end up either on the front page or specifically in the section devoted to Quidditch, so he hadn't gone looking even when he wanted to use it as a shield. Potter turned the _Prophet _around, looking grim, and folded the pages back so Draco could see.

Draco bent over. There was a photograph of an angry-looking woman standing on the steps in front of a small lawyer's office whose services Draco had occasionally used, Merrythought, Merrythought, and Wiggs. She had a sign in her hand, although the wind was blowing in the photograph and it was difficult to make out what it said.

Underneath, though, the headline and its subtitle left no doubt.

_**HARRY POTTER USING CHILDREN IN UNHOLY RITES?**_

_'Just pay me in time with them': a concerned grandmother's fears_

And then the story went on to say that Anne Quillona, who had gone to Harry for help in counseling her granddaughter, had not only got no help, but believed that Harry might want to spend time with children to influence their minds the wrong way, or perhaps to steal their magic or their body parts for use in Dark rituals.

"It isn't the worst thing she could have said about me," said Harry, and brushed his hand through his hair again. "Merlin knows that it was worse being Undesirable Number One. But it's pretty bad."

Draco read through the article this time, instead of skimming it. But the information was essentially the same. No proof and tons of shit, the very thing the _Prophet _liked to do best.

"So," said Draco, going back to something that was more important to him. He looked again at the photograph. The woman was personally unfamiliar to him, but there was no chance he would forget that sneering, fuming face _now_. "The woman who spread the rumors about you and who you didn't want me to take revenge on is named Anne Quillona, is she?"

Harry started and glared at him. "You're not going to prank her."

Draco sniffed. "Of course not." Slytherins didn't do _pranks. _They chose various methods of cunning and ruthless revenge, instead.

"Draco." Harry grabbed his hand. "You aren't going to do _anything _to her. Can't you see that would only damage my reputation and my business further? It would mean that she could point a finger at someone close to me and say they wanted to destroy her for spreading the truth. And that would make people more likely to believe her."

Draco looked pointedly at the fourth page of the _Prophet_. "And you think people don't now?"

"Not many, or it would have been on the front page." Harry shook his arm until Draco looked back at him. "Huggins—that's the Head of Child Welfare for the Ministry, the one who gave me the information I needed to set up my business and told me there's never been one like it before—said Quillona is a known troublemaker. Right now, no one's listening to her in particular because she's interesting but not that interesting. She will be if you make her a victim." He hesitated. "And she has a granddaughter. I don't want Justice to suffer because her grandmother gets poison in her food or something."

"_Justice_," Draco said, rolling his eyes. "Well, anyone can see why _that _family would be considered Light."

Apparently Harry read something in his tone of voice that Draco may not have entirely meant, because he sat back with a cautiously relieved smile. "Then you won't send a spell after her?"

"It would be more subtle than poison in her food," Draco said. "No one would have to know it came from me."

Harry's smile faded. "That's not the point. Quillona's so bloody suspicious that she would decide it came from _me_, no matter what she suffered. I don't want you and Scorpius to be under suspicion, but I also don't want to suffer because Quillona has me in her sights again."

Draco sighed faintly. On the one hand, the thought that Quillona might get away with spreading terrible rumors about Harry infuriated him. On the other hand, he could admire Harry's new commitment to saving himself. "You finally decided that you aren't willing to just let yourself slide into the gutter because someone else might benefit from it? You've decided you're important enough to fight for?"

Harry squinted at him. "I was never going to let myself _slide into the gutter. _I protected myself when you set those warlocks on me."

It was the first direct reference either of them had made to that since their conversation at Andromeda's house after Draco had added his blood to the potion to save Teddy. Draco caught and held his breath, but he felt no explosion of anger in his stomach, and he doubted that Harry did either, from his mortified expression.

Draco shook his head when Harry tried to apologize, though. "No. It was going to happen sooner or later. And like I said, I'm glad you're thinking ahead and you know the kinds of tactics that someone like Quillona might take to make you miserable." He reached out and combed his fingers through Harry's hair, watching as Harry's eyes shut in startled pleasure. "Very glad," he murmured. Then he dropped his hand and interlaced his fingers with Harry's.

Harry flushed as though someone was going to come in and glare suspiciously at their joined hands. He kept holding Draco's hand, though, while he looked at Quillona's picture and his mouth became a thin, stubborn line again. "I know what she can do, and I know what _I _can do. Leave me to deal with her in my own way, all right?"

After a moment, Draco inclined his head. In truth, he did think that Harry would defend himself now, and not just lie back passively and take the accusation. His reluctance came mainly from the idea that Harry wouldn't be able to come up with something that would stop Quillona in her tracks, only delay her a little while.

Harry beamed at him, his eyes gone soft. "Thank you," he said, and then he pulled Draco almost flat across the table to kiss him.

It was pretty uncomfortable, with the edge of the table cutting into Draco's stomach and his mouth mashed against Harry's, but it was still hot enough to make him sweat. He pulled back only when he had to, when his breath was getting stoppered up in his throat, and looked Harry straight in the eye. Harry was flushed, too, and glanced aside as if Draco's eyes were suns he couldn't bear to meet.

"You can't stay home from work for just a little while?" Draco asked, and curled his fingers around a piece of dangling black hair.

"Sorry, no," said Harry, strangled, and he got up to go get his cloak.

"Then have _fun_ at work," said Draco, and he didn't even have to work to inflect his voice the way he wanted.

Harry paused, his eyes darting up to meet Draco's over his shoulder. Draco thought he had paused against his will. He smiled at Harry and picked up his teacup, blowing over it in a way it didn't need, since it had gone almost cold.

But then, that was nothing a Warming Charm couldn't cure.

Harry tore his gaze away at last, coughing, sounding as if he would strangle even when no one was touching him. Then he bolted for the front door. Draco called solicitously after him, "You didn't leave anything up in the bedrooms, did you?"

"Don't think so!" Harry yelled back. "See you later!" And then the front door slammed, to the audible and squeaking distress of Izzy.

Draco leaned back and laughed, because he could. Then he smiled. Harry had been so caught up in everything else that he hadn't even objected when Draco referred to Malfoy Manor as Harry's "home." Well, that was fine, of course. Draco wanted Harry to feel comfortable here and come to consider it a place he could live.

But it was still amusing.

The face of the woman staring up through the photograph, lips set in what seemed to be a permanent pout, was less so. Draco did cast that Warming Charm on his tea, and then sat back and studied Quillona again. He agreed with Harry that any punishment right now would be premature, or returned twofold on Harry.

But he couldn't help but think the name of Quillona familiar. Maybe not Anne, but the family. Didn't he know something about them, something that might serve as a kind of insurance in case the trouble she made for Harry became worse than this?

A few minutes later, he was firecalling his father, lips set in a smirk that Harry might smack him for, but which he couldn't take off his face. He wasn't going to _do _anything with this information, not yet. He just wanted to confirm it.

And then he would have it to hand if they _did _need it. Not even Harry could object to that.

* * *

Harry arrived at his office to find owls loaded with Howlers swarming around it.

The instant they saw him, they detoured towards him, but Harry was already casting spells that spread around him in a half-dome, then another half-dome from the other side when the owls began to circle around in that direction. The dome hovered just above the ground, and moved with him like a big round shield. The owls hooted at him angrily. Harry was easily able to ignore that as he opened the door, though.

The owls couldn't follow him inside because of the door-wards that engaged the moment they tried. They bounced back with shrieks that sounded human to Harry for a moment. But then he reminded himself that he had heard plenty of _actual _human screams in the war and while he was an Auror, and the cries became the cries of birds again.

When Harry sat down at his desk, the owls gathered on the windowsills, glaring at him. Harry muttered under his breath and hesitated. He knew what he _wanted _to do, but it was a spell that would at least get him a fine if someone detected it. He probably wouldn't be hauled in front of the Wizengamot, though, or investigated by the Aurors. It was a spell classified Dark mostly by a former Minister who had liked owls more than people.

Harry tapped his wand on the edge of his desk and whispered the spell. "_Ventus defendere._"

The wind traveled through the office, building up power as it circled the office, and Harry got up and opened the window. In an instant the owls tried to jump him, but the wind caught them and carried them all up into the corner between the wall and the ceiling. The shrieking birds were held prisoner while the wind grew invisible fingers and calmly and efficiently stripped them of their messages, Howlers included. Then the wind hurled the owls back through the window. Harry looked out and made sure that all the owls caught themselves by at least fluttering to other perches on the sides of buildings.

"See? Nothing _actually _happened to them," Harry told the spirit of that dead Minister who had been sure that the spell would hurl owls to their deaths, and then closed the window.

When he turned around, the collection of Howlers was boiling towards him. Harry raised his eyebrow, chopped his wand straight downwards, and said, "_Ventus ignis._"

The wind that had held the Howlers and other letters came rolling back, but this time, it was visible, made so by the flames riding its back. The flames were intense, but would burn only paper. Harry watched with satisfaction that bit him like teeth as the Howlers caught on fire, bursting like popcorn in a microwave, and the ordinary letters blew up and then settled burning on the floor. Harry cast _Aguamenti_, and then walked towards them, dismissing the burning wind, so he could look at the sodden remnants.

…_always believed in you…_

_...never wanted to believe the _Prophet, _but this is the end of enough…_

…_only want the payment of spending time with the children? Why?_

Harry stood back up. He couldn't catch his breath. He paced back and forth for a moment, and then looked out the window again. There was only a single owl there right now, but others looked as though they were winging in to join it.

Was there no one who would write to support him?

A second later, Harry snorted. The ones who he knew personally, like Ron and Hermione—and Draco—would talk with him instead, and believe him anyway. And the ones who wanted to support him instead of squeal and whine would probably not bother with writing.

Harry closed his eyes. Any attack on Quillona probably _would _just bring forth something worse. That was true, particularly if he let Draco at the woman.

He doubted Quillona would get bored of the sport soon, either. And there would be a good supply of reporters at the _Prophet _who would want to listen to her and spin idle stories, from boredom or desire to claim a page near the front if they couldn't get the leader.

So. He had a choice to make. Maybe it was one he should have made long since, because it would have let people understand his business better. But he hadn't wanted to. It was his secret.

Harry shivered for a moment. _Can't I keep anything for myself? Can't I have just _one _secret that Healer Brandeis or Draco or the general public doesn't need to know about? _

Maybe not. But, Harry thought as he opened his eyes, he didn't need to be alone in bearing the brunt. He knew that Ron and Hermione would have helped him if he had confessed the secret of Ethan. He hadn't _wanted _to, and perhaps it would have caused some strangeness between them for a little while, but they would have. He knew they would gradually get used to the notion of him dating Draco, which had to be stranger for them.

Andromeda and he could reconcile. Again, it would take time, but what lay hurting between them had nothing to do with his business or Draco and everything to do with one careless comment.

And Harry thought Draco would likely support him through this. If he was willing to date Harry at all—something that could expose him to a lot of public condemnation on its own—then he could live through this.

Harry sat up. _Fine_. He would make the choice that wouldn't change him in the eyes of his friends and adopted family, and might actually, when this particular fire had burned, leave him with a chance to conduct his business uninterrupted.

He would tell the public that he couldn't have children. And see what happened from there.


	38. The Challenge of the Truth

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Thirty-Eight—The Challenge of the Truth_

"That's…something, Harry."

Harry had to smile, as tense as he was feeling. It wasn't often that he managed to stun Ron into sitting there with his mouth open and his eyes fixed on him like this. "Isn't it?" he asked, with a lightness he was far from feeling. But he had to have some confidence in this, or his friends would think he wasn't making the right decision. "I want to have a life again, though. This will get some people off my back."

Ron shook his head in the next second. Harry could see the Auror office behind him, the desk teetering with paperwork as usual. Harry swallowed against a wave of something oddly like homesickness. He hadn't always had it easy when he was a working Auror, either, but at least he had known he had a partner who would support him no matter what.

"But what about the ones it won't?" Ron demanded. "Some people will think you're lying. Some people won't care. They'll still think that you wanting to spend time with children is creepy."

Harry licked his lips. "That's another thing I thought of. I'll have to start charging at least modest fees." He didn't really want to, because that would cut out people like Mathilda Patience who didn't have any money to spare, but maybe for them he could work out a payment plan. "I'll say that my time is limited and valuable."

Ron gave him a look of real curiosity. "What's going to limit it, though? I mean, they'll think you don't have much to do now that you're not an Auror."

"Because I do have children I like to spend time with," said Harry. "I haven't spent much time with Rose and Hugo lately. Or Teddy, but that was because of the argument between me and Andromeda." He hesitated, wondering how Ron would take his next piece of news, but Ron only waited and blinked in the way he did when he knew Harry hadn't finished his sentences yet. "And Scorpius Malfoy."

Ron acted as if he would stand up for a second, but his legs didn't appear ready to support him. So he only sank back down again and stared at Harry. Harry snickered in spite of himself. He was sorry Draco wasn't here. He knew Draco would have appreciated the expression on Ron's face.

"Malfoy is still having that many problems with him?" Ron asked, his voice small and almost scared-sounding, as if he thought that Harry would snap at the question.

_Or, no, what he really wants is for me to give him an answer that means I'm not spending time with Draco for his own sake, _Harry thought, and blinked at Ron in turn as he replied.

"Actually, I think Draco is really improving in the way he parents Scorpius." He paused instead, but Ron made a gesture for him to go on. "What I mean is that I'm going to be joining in the parenting, so of course that means I'm going to be spending a lot of time with Scorpius."

_If Scorpius agrees. _That was what Harry had to remind himself of, again, when he thought about it. Scorpius had already been through his parents' divorce, and Harry was smart enough to realize no one had probably consulted him about it. Harry didn't want to inflict another, perhaps unwanted parent on him without asking him if he wanted Harry.

Ron stared at him in a traumatized way, and then shook his head and shut his eyes. "If you wanted to spend even more time with Rose and Hugo, you only had to ask," he whispered. "And I'm sure that Bill and Fleur would love to have you spend more time with their brood, too. You know Victoire always asks about you."

Harry stared at him. This wasn't what he'd thought Ron's reaction would be when he began talking. "What do you mean?"

Ron's gaze was full of pity. "I know you want a family, mate. But you _have _one. And we would be more than happy to share our children with you." He leaned forwards as Harry opened his mouth. "And I know you were going to say that it wouldn't be the same, but you must have got over that desire for blood children a bit if you're thinking about joining _Malfoy's _family. So you can join us more often, and that takes care of everything. Including being with people who _care _about you."

Harry grimaced. All right, so it had been silly to try and keep the truth concealed from Ron. And anyway, he had always _meant _to tell him, so why not do it now?

"It's more than that," he said. Ron paused in the act of getting up, and looked at him as if wondering what he meant. Harry nodded to him and pulled a little on the collar of his robe. He didn't think he would have any trouble saying this if Draco was right here, if only because Draco would insist on speaking the truth, but he did now. "I—I'm sort of—dating Draco. He's invited me to live with him and Scorpius."

Ron sat down again with such a thump that Harry was surprised someone didn't come bursting into the office demanding to know what had happened. He stared at Harry in a silence so thick Harry wasn't sure he _should _break it. It might hurt Ron if he did. But Ron only shook his head when Harry glanced at him and said, "I'll be all right. As soon as you explain something to me."

He hooked his hands beneath his chin and gave Harry an earnest glance that reminded Harry unnervingly of Healer Brandeis. "When did you find out you were gay? And is that the real reason you ended your marriage to Ginny?"

Harry spluttered for a second, but got hold of himself. He wasn't going to get hung up on irrelevant things when something _else _mattered a lot more. "I'm not gay, Ron," he said, and writhed a little from the suspicious glance Ron turned on him. "No, really, I'm not. I—I might be bisexual. I don't know. I haven't thought a lot about what it makes me if I'm dating a man."

"_I _would have."

"If you were me, you would have been dating your own sister," said Harry tightly. "Let's not use that as a basis for comparisons."

Ron stared at him with an open mouth for a second, then laughed harshly. "Right. Good point." He hesitated, then added, "But you need to tell me, I think. I was under the impression that your marriage really did end just because of the children thing." _And because Ginny wanted to sleep with someone else, _Harry thought, but kept his mouth shut. "But if it was this…"

Harry shrugged. "What? You'd think badly of me for not telling you for three years?" Ron nodded, gaze fastened on him, and Harry pushed on. "You'd think I was a bad friend, someone who didn't trust you, someone who was keeping secrets from you for no good reason? Because I valued being thought of well by Ginny and you more than I valued being honest with you?"

"That doesn't sound like you," said Ron.

"Because it's _not _me." Harry folded his arms and traded glare for glare. "Honestly, Ron, I'm messed up enough about what I am, all right? Without adding this to it. I didn't even know if I could be attracted to Draco, but I've figured out I can. That I want to give it a chance. When I have a name for myself, I'll tell you." He hesitated, then added, because he couldn't not, "And when I was married to Ginny, I loved her, and I didn't want anyone else to come between us. _Literally_. Okay?"

"Well, that's right," said Ron, looking a little thoughtful. "You didn't want her to sleep with some other bloke and get pregnant. I reckon you would have been relieved to have an excuse to get divorced if you were gay."

"It wasn't an _excuse_," said Harry. He hoped that people would quit touching on the most painful part of his life soon. He was going to make a rule, he thought, to never talk about what his inability to have children had done to his marriage after the one initial interview about how it had ended things. And he wasn't going to mention Ginny's name at all. "It was the _explanation_. I'm not gay."

Ron made a little clenching motion with one hand, as though he was gathering something in to himself. "But why Malfoy, mate? There's all sorts of people who would be willing to share your life."

Harry smiled without much humor as he realized the answer. "But none of them made enough of a push. I didn't want to take too much of a risk, and I didn't put myself out there, and no one came far enough with me. Draco has. He—he wants me, Ron. As part of his life _and _part of Scorpius's life. And so he pushed past the barriers in a way no one's done before. I'm going to date him because I want to but also because he's made such an effort that I can _see _him, the way I couldn't the people I tried to date before this. He isn't blinded by the Boy-Who-Lived. I never have to worry about that with him."

"There are other people you wouldn't have to worry about it with, either." Ron's voice was muffled. He had his head against his knees when Harry looked at him again, his hands clenched in his hair as if he was trying and failing to understand against all odds. "This is—mate, I think you only chose him for his kid." He looked up with a ravaged face. "Sorry, but that's the way it feels. And if you just need someone with a kid, you could do _so much better_."

Harry caught his breath and held it for a minute against the temptation to cry out. No, Ron wouldn't understand why he was doing it if he _did _do that, and Harry wasn't about to hurt his feelings with a scolding.

"Better than someone who cares for me?" he asked, when he had the self-control to really respond.

That got him a direct look and a jaw dropped so far that Harry had to smile. He could see, sometimes, what other people found exasperating about Ron, but there was also so much that was endearing.

_I'll just never ask Draco for a list, that's all._

"Does he love you?" Ron asked. "I thought you said he—" He choked, but produced the words with a good deal of effort through a throat that sounded choked. "Wanted you. That's a sight different from love!"

"So is what Ginny and I had by the end of our marriage," said Harry. He was sorry to keep invoking her, but he could do it with Ron in a way he couldn't with the wider public, he supposed. Ron had heard the story from both sides. "And yeah, he does want me. But he also wants me to live in the Manor, and he gave me rooms there, and he was upset that I never asked for an invitation to dinner, because he wanted me to do that instead of him just having to invite me over all the time." He whipped a hand through his hair, a means of whipping up his courage, because Ron's own incredulity was making him wish he could shut the Floo. "And maybe it's not love, yet, but I think it could get there."

"Are you ever going to tell me what really happened between you and Malfoy?" Ron shook his head when Harry opened his mouth. "And don't give me that load of bollocks about how you contacted him for the first time when you wanted him to give Teddy blood. You wouldn't be reacting like this if that was really the first time you'd talked to him since Hogwarts."

Harry flinched a little. He didn't know if he was ready even now to give up the secret of Ethan, but more because it would make Draco look so bad to Ron and Hermione than because he wanted to protect himself.

"I'll tell you someday," he said at last, and Ron sighed out, a huge sigh that ended with a snort.

"Fine, mate." Ron leveled a finger at him. "I just hope that I won't have to comfort you when you come crying to me some night and resist saying 'I told you so.'"

"When was the last time I came over to your house crying over a broken heart?" Harry demanded, upset. "I didn't do that over Ginny!" And none of the people he'd dated since her had mattered to him enough to merit a broken heart.

"I know, but that's only because she was my sister," Ron said, in a tone of voice that said Harry should already have known this. "I'm your best mate. I'd be insulted if you went to someone else to talk about your broken heart." He reached out as if he was going to poke Harry through the flames, but he ended up just making a really expressive gesture in front of him instead. "Okay?"

Harry felt a smile quivering on his lips. He hesitated, then let it out anyway. Ron deserved to see it. "Okay. I'll remember that."

"See that you do." Ron sighed and shook his head. "Blimey, mate, I almost forgot what you said about going to tell people that you can't have kids when you broke the news about Malfoy."

"I know." Harry took in a deep breath. "I'm contemplating announcing both things at the same time. One of them might take the edge off the outrage about the other."

"No, you'll just get a lot of Howlers about him and impertinent questions about the other," said Ron. "Probably from the same people, because they can be stupid in more than one way." He glanced at Harry again and cleared his throat in a way that suggested he couldn't quite believe what he was saying himself. "Listen, mate. Talk this over with him before you do anything, right?"

Harry blinked. "Of course. I would never say anything about dating him until I know if he's all right with it."

"Not just that. Both things." Ron was struggling with something that seemed caught in his throat. "I think he has a right to know."

Harry sighed. "I suppose. Maybe it'll give him something to think about besides punishing Quillona."

"He can only do that if George doesn't get to her first," Ron said ominously. "She's pretty close to getting a nice big welcome package from Weasley's Wizard Wheezes, wrapped up in ribbons with her name on it."

"_Ron_," Harry hissed. "Tell him to stop that. She would probably give it to her granddaughter, and Justice has been hurt enough. I don't want her to suffer any more because of this."

"George can attune it to just the person he wants to hurt," Ron began, and then threw up his hands when he saw Harry staring at him. "Fine, fine, I'll tell him. This is the day when I promise to do all sorts of things you want, isn't it?"

"Only the important ones," Harry said, and caught Ron's eye, and smiled at him gratefully. "You could have been a lot worse about it than you were. Thanks."

Ron wagged a finger at him. "As long as you remember who's your best mate here, and who's not."

It _was _bad of him, after everything else Ron had done, but Harry couldn't resist. "Of course Draco's not my best mate," he said meekly enough. "I don't want to play chess with him, or go to him to sob over a broken heart. I want to do _other _things with him, like—"

Ron yelped, clapped his hands over his ears, and somehow managed to shut the Floo connection at the same time, even with his hands far from the fireplace. Harry knelt there and laughed until he felt laughed out.

Then he sighed and stood. It was time to move on to what might be the most challenging step of all, he thought: convincing Draco this was a good idea.

* * *

"No," Draco said. He didn't have to think about it. "The public doesn't have the right to know that about you."

"It would get some of them off my back." Harry was sitting in the chair across from the fire, and he had a glass of wine in his hand, but just like last night, he wasn't really drinking it. He was watching Draco, and he looked calm and reasonable, and Draco was instantly suspicious. Harry had behaved excitably enough when he was playing Exploding Snap with Scorpius earlier. Draco had thought it was normal. Now it seemed as if Harry had been turning thoughts and argument tactics over in his head as though he was playing chess instead. "And it might make some people understand why I opened this business, and come in to ask me to spend time with their children out of the kindness of their hearts."

"But why do you need that, if you have Scorpius?" Draco asked, a little desperately. "If you have me?"

Harry lifted his head as though Draco had pulled on his hair. His eyes were cool and direct, which disconcerted Draco. He liked them warm and distant and hazy, for many reasons.

"Both of you are wonderful," Harry said quietly. "But Teddy didn't content me by himself, either, when it was just me being his godfather, or the Weasleys and Andromeda when I got along with them just fine and didn't have the ghosts of my marriage or what Andromeda did between us. I need more than one family life, Draco, no matter how wonderful it is."

Draco tapped his fingers on the arm of the chair. Yes, all right, he could see that. He just wished that this didn't involve such a personally risky step for Harry.

"What if you tell them the truth, and nothing changes?" he asked, voicing his greatest fear. "And they send more Howlers, and letters, and stop you in the street and yell at you?" He shook his head when Harry opened his mouth to protest. "You have to consider it. This is what hurts you most, and they'll pick at it again and again, just to get some attention from you or other people."

Harry was silent for a long moment, head bowed and hand stroking the stem of his wineglass. Draco waited. At least there was no immediate denial, which meant Harry was thinking things through.

In a way, though, that was a bad thing. If Harry had thought it through and come up with good reasons for his actions, then Draco might have to go along with this.

"Do you know," Harry said to himself at last, in tones of soft wonder, "it doesn't hurt me as it once did."

"What?" Draco leaned to the side so he could see Harry's face through the glass of the goblet, in case the new angle made the words make sense. "Of course it does. You were fighting like mad to protect that secret just a few weeks ago, when you didn't want to tell me about it."

"The thought of other people knowing I can't have children." Harry sipped from his glass and set it down, then leaned forwards to take Draco's hands, which was so enchanting that Draco was inclined to forgive any strangeness in his way of speaking. "And the end of my marriage. I got over it." He hesitated, then corrected himself. "No, I mean, it still hurts, but it doesn't hurt as much as it used to."

"Why?" Draco would have liked to believe this, but he really couldn't trust it, not when the pain had been so recent.

"Because of you, I think," said Harry, smiling at him. "Because you've offered me something that's solid and that I can work towards, even if I end up not being able to keep it." Draco opened his mouth to say that it wouldn't be _his _fault if Harry wasn't able to keep it, but Harry's words flowed on and over him again. "And you've offered me Scorpius. Does he seem like he might like to have another dad?"

"You know he likes you," said Draco, when he got his voice back.

"There's a difference between Uncle Harry, or Uncle Blaise, and another parent," said Harry seriously.

Draco was starting to think that he had never known what a pessimist Harry was when they were back in Hogwarts. Then, he had seemed to eternally hope for things like a good mark in Potions class even when he had to know they couldn't happen. Maybe it was just things like work as an Auror that had changed him.

"We can ask him," said Draco. "But yes, you're welcome to both of us."

Harry smiled. "Is that so?" he asked, and suddenly his hands holding Draco's were warm in a new way, and he was leaning in with a predatory little expression on his face that seemed to have grown out of the smile without Draco even noticing the transition.

Draco opened his mouth to respond, and Harry kissed him, grabbing his chin and manipulating Draco's face so it was where he wanted it.

It was breathlessly hot and exciting, and Draco moaned and fell sprawling on his chair. Harry pressed his head against the back of the chair, hand still holding Draco's chin, his tongue darting in and out as if so curious for a taste that he couldn't really pause for a lingering one.

Draco reached out with one hand that he _meant _to touch Harry's side, but it caught in his robe and flapped sideways instead, and hit Draco's own glass. That fell, shattering, on the floor, spilling the last of his wine, and Harry leaped back with a startled cry.

They both panted and looked at each other for a second, and then Harry laughed and said, "Among the things that I have to learn how to control are my Auror reflexes."

"Indeed," Draco said, with a smile, and kept his hand extended. Harry looked at it for a second as though wondering what he should do with it, then took it and kissed it.

"I'm tired," he said. "You agree that it would be best to tell the truth?"

Draco sighed. He knew when he was manipulated, and when he was allowing the manipulation.

"Only if you have me at your side when you make the announcement," he said, and drowned in the brilliance of Harry's smile.


	39. A Difficult Man

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Thirty-Nine—A Difficult Man_

"You're sure you want to do this?" Hermione was the one asking him, darting her glance back and forth between the parchment full of notes in front of her and the front of Grimmauld Place, as if she had imagined some other setting for Harry's announcement that he couldn't have children.

"Yes," said Harry quietly. He checked the wards that would keep the large gathering of wizards out of sight of the Muggles who lived in the neighborhood. The wards marched along the edge of the street and circled both the front step and the back garden. There was the chance that someone would land a broom there or Apparate to that point, although they had better be one of Harry's good friends if they did that.

"It might have seemed—well, homier if you did it from a place that you're actually living," Hermione mused. "Less formal. More a secret that you're telling because you want to tell it, the way you say you want to."

Harry snorted. "Formal is what I want. I'm allowing them this far into my life. No farther."

"They'll ask, you know," said Hermione. Her gaze was haunted, and Harry was sure this was the heart of her objection to his plan, although she had mostly brought up other things when they talked about it. "They'll want to know more, and they'll argue that you have no right to keep other things secret, when you revealed this."

"Too bad," said Harry. He glanced at the notes in front of Hermione, and then shrugged and turned away. They concerned the reporters that had been invited, and the food ordered. None of that was Harry's responsibility. He had what he was going to say as firmly in his mind as though he had spent hours memorizing it.

That wasn't true, of course. It was simply carved on his heart, where he couldn't escape it.

"Will this really change anything?" Hermione went on, gloomily. "You're taking a risk, and it might only bring you more questions and more nosiness in the end."

Harry nodded a little. "Well, I'm making an investment of trust in them. The people who might ask me questions, I mean. I'm trusting that some people will feel protective of me and sorry for me after this, and that will mean a reduction in the letters. And I'm making another investment at the same time." He felt Hermione's stare, and finally turned around and smiled at her. "Those wards you urged me to get, the ones that bounce Howlers and filter letters? I'm going to do that. _And _I'm hiring a secretary to filter the ones that'll get through. And charging fees for my services."

"Who's the secretary?" Hermione looked as if she could suggest several candidates if Harry didn't already have someone in mind.

"Mathilda Patience," said Harry, and nodded when Hermione opened her mouth. "Yes, the one who accidentally brought Quillona to my door. But she does need a job that pays better than the ones she had, and she feels terrible about her part in this and wants to make up for it somehow. This is a way to."

Hermione leaned back and openly studied him. Harry kept his gaze on the wards. A few people had arrived just inside them and were milling around, but no one seemed inclined to take advantage of the rows of neat wooden chairs, Transfigured from pillows and tapestries from Grimmauld Place, set up in front of the table where Hermione and Harry sat. They just milled and stared and whispered.

Harry was waiting for one in particular, and then he would be strong enough to counter any number of hostile stares.

"You've changed," Hermione murmured. "Not enough that it makes me worry someone has hit you with Imperius, but enough that I have to wonder."

Harry nodded to her. "Well, Draco played a large part in that. I had to finally start wondering if I was going to brood on the past forever, or if I was going to move forwards and take something I could have."

"The past and the thing you can't have being blood children?" Hermione winced when she spoke the words, as if she was touching an open wound.

"Yeah," said Harry. "And the marriage with Ginny. I mean, that was horrible, the way that ended." His throat burned a little, and he swallowed. "But I was looking for a specific person to replace her. I finally realized _that's _not going to happen. How could it? But I could find someone else, someone who was right under my nose and had different things to offer, if I just stopped deciding the past was always the best."

"Malfoy is still pretty different from Ginny."

"That's part of the appeal, though," Harry pointed out, and stood as he watched Draco finally Apparate in. He strolled through the crowd of watchers as though they were more chairs to be avoided, and Harry smiled.

"I don't know if I want to ask you to explain that," Hermione muttered, and leaned back to watch Draco come in.

"No, you probably don't," Harry agreed, with a faint smile in her direction. He went to meet Draco, and heads immediately turned. Harry was growing resigned to the fact that that would probably always be the case. What he needed to work on was not letting himself be intimidated or upset about that.

"Hello," said Draco, and leaned in towards Harry, his eyes bright with mischief. Harry raised his eyebrows. They hadn't discussed kissing in public, but since Draco had agreed to announce they were dating, it wouldn't surprise Harry if he wanted to do it.

In the end, though, Draco drew back and only wrung Harry's hand once as if they hadn't seen each other in ages, and then accompanied Harry across the short expanse of stones and grass to the table. The crowd behind them had gone silent, but now questions were exploding, especially when Harry held the chair out from the side of the table so Draco could sit down.

"Mr. Potter! Have you been seeing a _man_?"

"Is this why you wanted the children? To kidnap a playmate for Mr. Malfoy's lonely son?" That was Rita Skeeter, her quill poised trembling above her parchment. Harry gave her a look of scorn. He was sure she was the one who had come up with the gossip that he was using the children's body parts in a Dark ritual, even if she wasn't the one who had written the actual article.

"I won't explain before the hour that we appointed," said Harry decisively, and sat down next to Draco. Draco nodded to him. He had a flush on his cheeks that was slow to fade. Harry was sure it came from what Skeeter had said about Scorpius.

A few more people tried to ask questions, but Harry simply and quietly ignored them, although he did lean over to murmur to Draco, "What did Zabini say when you told him why he needed to watch Scorpius for the day?"

"He said that it would be fine, of course," said Draco, and rolled his eyes back at Harry. "What would you have expected him to say?"

"Well, from what you told me about him before," Harry said truthfully, "I would have expected him to roll all over the room laughing."

"There may have been some laughter," said Draco, with a dignity that Harry found charming. "There may have been. And then Scorpius came into the room, and explained about Uncle Harry, and I think Blaise was jealous." He grinned at Harry.

"Of you?" Draco's relationship with Zabini sounded strange enough to Harry that he wouldn't be surprised if it included some flirting.

"Of you," said Draco, but before Harry could nod to himself, Draco went on. "Because he's no longer Scorpius's favorite uncle, it seems, and of course he can't let _that _stand."

Harry laughed quietly to himself, and then looked up when he felt the pressure of an intense gaze he couldn't ignore on him. Hermione was clasping her hands tightly as she sat on the other side of the table, working them together so hard that Harry was surprised she hadn't hurt her fingers.

A second later, she pointedly turned her head away, and left Draco to blink in confusion and murmur, "What did I do to make Granger disapprove of me this time? I know why she disapproves in general, but this is new."

"I know that she thinks you're very different from Ginny," said Harry neutrally.

"Good God, I should _hope _so." Draco turned his head to the side in a way that puzzled Harry at first, but in a (fairly unwelcome) flash, he grasped it. Draco was looking down between his own legs to reassure himself that his cock hadn't gone away.

Harry nudged Draco hard with his elbow. "_Stop _that," he hissed, feeling as if his face was about to catch on fire.

"No one else will catch on to what I'm doing," said Draco, and gave him a broad, toothy grin. "Except someone with a mind as filthy as yours, and in that case, they deserve what they get."

Harry shut his eyes and shook his head, and managed to refocus on the upcoming meeting. A few more reporters were due to arrive, and Ron had said he would come along for moral support. Harry would have to—

His mind skidded hard off its rails when he saw who had just Apparated in near the wards, and was striding rapidly towards a seat in the back row.

He looked at Hermione, but Hermione held up a hand and shook her head, disclaiming responsibility. At least she hadn't invited her.

Harry took a deep breath and faced front again. He supposed technically, no one had to _invite _anyone to this. After all, it was a public meeting open to a bunch of different kinds of guests, and reporters.

But as he looked into the blazing eyes of his ex-wife, Harry did wish there was a way that he could hide immediately afterwards without looking like a coward.

* * *

Ginny Corner was looking—pregnant.

Draco tried to keep his face from showing what he thought, but a moment later, he realized that he needn't have bothered. She gave him the briefest, tiniest glance. A second later, her gaze was back on Harry, scanning him as though she thought he would fall over just to please her.

_Or maybe he's looking too happy for her tastes, _Draco thought, and hatred coiled and snapped viciously in his gut. He would control himself. He wouldn't say anything aloud to her. He would keep his distance. If she said anything to him, he would turn his head and walk away.

But no one could keep him from thinking what an _idiot _she was, that she'd held the world in the palm of her hand, and she'd given it up.

Harry's hand was tight on Draco's wrist. Draco gave him a sweet, compliant look, and that only made Harry snort and shake his head.

"Don't start something," Harry breathed. "That's the only thing I can ask. We can't do anything much if someone decides to ask the inevitable questions." His gaze went back to Skeeter, and he laughed without making a sound. Draco couldn't mistake the bitterness in his face. "Which I'm sure they will."

Draco just nodded passively, and Harry twitched and frowned at him. "You weren't going to do that, were you?" he added.

"One of the things that my parents trained into me is social graces." Draco let himself smile, and made sure Harry could see the smile was directed towards him—because, after all, Harry was the important one here, not his ex-wife. "I may not like it much, but I can behave politely towards people when I have the need."

Harry scanned him once, closely, as though he expected to surprise a hostile intention on Draco's face, and then nodded and sat back. Granger stood up a minute later, and if she mouthed something to Harry that she shouldn't have, Draco couldn't see it, given the way she was standing on the other side of the table and studying what was obviously an agenda.

"Thank you for coming," Granger announced to the reporters. _As if this were a fucking charity event for one of her pitiful organizations, _Draco thought, but once again, he was capable of keeping sentiments like that to himself. He had to be, if he wanted to keep Harry. And doing that was worth far more than the chance to sneer at Harry's friends. "You know that Harry has some announcements he wants to make."

"Yes," said Harry, and stood up. He looked more graceful and dignified than he would ever believe, Draco thought, looming behind the table while he studied his "guests" with narrowed eyes. Draco couldn't help looking at his ex-wife again, but if Harry was aware of how much she'd like to burn him up with her eyes, he didn't look as though he would let it trouble him. "So. One rumor that's been going around is that I want to spend time with children to use them in Dark rituals."

Draco held back a snicker. Said like that in broad daylight, not printed down and gossiped about in eager whispers, it sounded like the ridiculous tripe it was. A few people looked at Skeeter, but most simply looked ashamed of themselves.

"No," said Harry. "I started this business because I can't have children of my own." He kept talking, without hurrying his pace, only raising his voice a little above the tide of murmurs that surrounded him. "I was hit with a combination of hexes years ago that made it impossible. I kept that secret, because I didn't think the wizarding world should intrude on my privacy. But it does mean that I've been pretty lonely."

He drew breath to go on, but Skeeter interrupted, waving her quill frantically. Draco could see her eyes gleaming like two coals even from here. It seemed Skeeter was even _more _interested in those stories that had the ring of truth and came from the mouth of the person she was stalking.

"Wait, wait, Mr. Potter!" Draco could have wished, for a minute, that Harry hadn't resigned from the Aurors. Skeeter sounded so disrespectful referring to Harry like that. At least she would have had to use the Auror title if he was still with the Ministry. "Are you saying that you're infertile?"

Draco was confident the reporters, even as experienced as they were, couldn't make out the minute flinch that trembled through Harry's body. But Draco could. On the other hand, he was also sitting very close to Harry's side.

Harry stood up straighter and inclined his head proudly. "That's what I'm saying."

The questions exploded then, mostly variations of "Who did this?" and "Can't you reverse it?" and "How long have you known?" Harry only stood there through all of them, wearing a tolerant expression that Draco had to keep biting his lip to avoid snickering at. Finally, the reporters seemed to realize that they couldn't hear Harry's answers even if he was giving them, and shut up a little.

Harry nodded and said, "I don't know who did it. I was in a battle, and the combination of hexes was what hit me. That's why it can't be undone, either. They can't trace back the exact combination and untangle it all."

"Use Veritaserum on the people who hexed you!" someone yelled.

Harry rolled his eyes back. "And if it was that simple, I would have done it years ago," he said. "But Veritaserum can't make you tell what you don't remember. And this is long enough ago now that they wouldn't."

"How long?" Skeeter was trembling with her quill poised, as if she only needed the number of years before she dashed off to write the article.

"Three years," said Harry, and then paused as if he was bracing for something, although Draco didn't know what that could be. He shifted a little. He should know everything about Harry, at least when it came to something as private as this.

Skeeter was the one who showed him. She slewed around like a weathervane to point straight at Harry's ex-Weasley, sitting in the chair with her arms cradled around her pregnant belly as though she assumed someone would try to snatch her unborn child away from her and give it to Harry. She flushed at the way Skeeter regarded her, but didn't run away or back down.

"The end of your marriage," Skeeter whispered. "That was the real reason for the end of your marriage?" She sounded delirious.

Ex-Weasley stood up. Her arms were still folded in front of her belly. "Harry's not telling the whole truth," she said. "He had no right to drag this issue out now. It's been three years. It should have been settled." She looked straight at Harry, and the raw pain on her face made Draco want to sigh. He could have told Harry that it wasn't as simple as making the announcement and not having people contest it. Weasley was _always _going to contest it. That was just the way things worked between them, apparently.

"It hasn't been settled because people have accused me of wanting to use children in Dark rituals," said Harry, and Draco was close enough to see the convulsive way his hands opened. "It would have been settled, if not for that. I wouldn't have had to bring it up, except _certain people _won't leave it alone and assume everything that I do has an evil motive."

Skeeter didn't look affected, of course, but a few of the other reporters had the good sense to look ashamed of themselves. Ex-Weasley apparently didn't like attention off her, and snapped, "It involves my secrets, too, Harry. You could have told me that you were planning to do this."

Harry looked at her with a calm that Draco thought he was probably enforcing on himself, rather than assuming because he wanted to. "Since I didn't, I'm curious how you knew enough to show up here."

"I heard that you were going to make an announcement, and suddenly, to combat some of the rumors," said Ex-Weasley, and folded her arms again. It made her stomach jounce and sway, and Draco wanted to hurt her for what that did to Harry's face as he looked at her. "Of course I knew that had to concern me. You had to say _something _in response to all those rumors."

Harry only shrugged, in the end, and tore his gaze away from Ex-Weasley. "This is the announcement," he told the reporters and others who leaned forwards as though hungry for his words. "I couldn't have children. My wife still wanted them. As you can see, she married someone else who could give her what she couldn't have with me."

Draco could feel his face and throat burning. _Fucking sense of honor. Fucking Gryffindor nobility. _He knew it was more than that, and if Harry revealed the whole truth, he would make his ex-wife look intolerably bad.

But that was the whole point. Harry said that he didn't want to do that, which meant revealing only enough to make it seem as if he was the sole cause of his marriage falling apart, and let her walk away.

The knowledge that Harry would do the same thing for him, if they had ever had a quarrel so severe, was no sop to Draco's anger. Harry _ought _to have the ability to hurt someone who had hurt him so badly. And even if Draco didn't know all the details, he recognized the look of intense pain on someone's face.

_I just don't understand how he can want revenge that much and hold himself back. _Draco was glad that he had been raised with the notion of restraint in matters of vengeance, yes, but only enough restraint to make sure he wouldn't get caught. He would never have this notion Harry apparently did of hurting himself by not seeking it.

"Did she cheat on you?" Skeeter demanded, her voice wavering up and down the scale. She must have a glut of gossip to feed on right now, Draco thought, and gave her a disgusted glance. At least that kept him from glaring at Ex-Weasley.

"No," said Harry so calmly that it left no room for doubt. Even though Draco sat there and let the doubt run through him and warm his chest anyway. "She wanted out of the marriage. So did I, in the end. It simply couldn't survive what was brought to bear on it."

Draco shifted slightly in his seat. He might not be able to do anything about Ex-Weasley—since Harry emphatically wouldn't let him—but he could make sure that Harry remembered what else they'd come here to announce.

Harry's eyes fell on him and softened. He reached out a hand, and Draco nodded, took it, and climbed to his feet.

"But now," Harry said, his gaze on Draco instead of the crowd, and Draco's gaze on him instead of his targets, "thanks to the generosity and daring of someone who was willing to take a chance, I can find a family of my own."

There was a confused humming of voices. Draco basked in that for a moment. No one had thought he was up here for this, although they must have wondered.

"Yes," said Harry, and faced them again. "I'm dating Draco Malfoy, and if his son Scorpius agrees, I'll also become his joint parent."

Once again, there was a burst of such shouting that finding one voice in the middle of all that, and listening to its question, was impossible. But no one seemed inclined to shut up and let one person go first this time. People were leaning forwards with their hands waving and tears of urgency running down their faces.

Then, abruptly, they all fell silent. Draco thought for a second that Harry had performed a Silencing Charm on them, but Harry's wand wasn't out. It took him a second to track the culprit down, since he had turned instinctively to Granger, but she looked as shocked as he felt.

"Listen," said Ex-Weasley, her voice all the shriller for the silence. "This is the way the marriage ended. It must have been. He was gay, and that's the reason he—" Her voice caught, broke, and for a moment, her eyelids came down as though she was shielding her eyes from sight. "That's the reason he's dating a man now," she said.

"You have the right to say what you like, Ginny," said Harry, his voice deep and calm. "But that's not true. It ended for the reason I said, and I'm dating Draco now because I want to."

"No," said Ex-Weasley, and stared at him.

Harry shrugged, and stepped out from behind the table. A wave of his wand removed the Silencing Charm on the reporters, and instantly they were clamoring again.

"Are you only with Mr. Malfoy for his child?"

"Do his parents know about this?"

"What are people going to say when they find out that you're dating someone who used to be a _Death Eater_?"

Harry smiled and began to answer. In all the commotion, Draco thought he was the only one who saw Ex-Weasley turn and walk away with slow, ringing steps.

_Like a death knell, _he thought, and drew close to Harry's side. He was going to protect him from whatever vengeance she might try to dish out.

If there was any. Maybe her family would persuade her not to enact it. Or maybe it would hurt too much for her to do it, or she would have Harry's noble restraint and hold back.

But honestly, Draco hoped she didn't.


	40. The Suffocation of Honor

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Forty—The Suffocation of Honor_

"That was hard for me, just so you know," said Draco, and his hand twitched on the back of Harry's neck as though he was going to pinch it.

Harry grunted a little and rolled his eyes when Draco _did _pinch the back of his neck. He had stayed long enough to answer exactly fifteen minutes' worth of questions, and then he'd told Hermione to take over the rest, in case she thought there were any to answer that were _worth _something. Hermione had nodded with her eyes shining like metal, and Harry had come back to the Manor with Draco, confident his interests were in good hands.

Harry turned towards Draco and took his wrists, wringing them gently. "Because of the audience's hostility towards you?" he asked gently. "That was greater than I expected, too. I mean, most of the time I think they were too stunned to question it, but towards the end…" He shuddered. He didn't care if it was for the sake of a story, there were just _way _too many people interested in his sex life, and that included Rita Skeeter.

"If I hadn't thought I could bear that, I would never have agreed to the announcement," said Draco, and gave him a fixed stare. "Can you _really _not imagine why it might have been difficult for me?"

Harry blinked at him some more, then said, "Oh. Ginny."

"Ginny," Draco agreed, though with a viciousness that made her name sound like a curse, and leaned forwards. "Are you going to let her get away with it?"

"Get away with _what_?" Harry rolled his eyes back at him. "I hate to break it to you, but our divorce and her pregnancy are pretty much out of my hands by now."

"But she sat there and blamed you, and you _let _her." Draco's hands were dancing softly, restlessly, along the back of the couch as he stepped away from Harry and began to prowl the room. "You didn't say anything about her wanting to sleep with someone else, the way she wanted to use you—"

"She couldn't," Harry corrected, pivoting around so he could keep an eye on Draco. "That's the hilarious part." Draco cast him a glance that said he wasn't laughing, and Harry sighed. "She couldn't use me to father her children or be her glamourous husband or whatever, because of what the curse did to me."

"But she blamed you," Draco said. "And you were sitting there and letting everyone think that the end of the marriage was your fault. And not hers." He stared at Harry, and his eyes burned in a way that made Harry think of flaring fireballs falling from the sky onto a battlefield he'd seen during his early Auror training.

"It was both of ours," Harry corrected him, a little irritated. "It's no more correct to say that it was only hers than to say that it was only mine."

Draco kept on staring. "Why?" he repeated, when the silence had gone on so long that he seemed to believe Harry had forgotten his original question.

"Because I want it to _end_," Harry said, and he must have conveyed enough passion in that one word that it affected Draco, because Draco straightened up and started to listen. "This—endlessness. I made the announcement about my lack of fertility so that the endless speculation about why I wanted to spend time with children would end, and I didn't blame Ginny for the divorce because I want to be free of the speculation about that, too. I want the gossip to end."

"It won't," said Draco, and his eyes sparked. "You have to learn to ignore it. That's what I had to do when it came to the gossip about my role in the war."

"Maybe that's true," Harry said, and rolled a shoulder at Draco, who continued to look at him with disbelief. "But I can avoid starting new gossip, at least. And I can refuse to affect the life of Ginny's child."

"She doesn't think the battle between you is done," said Draco, after a moment in which he had stood looking thoughtfully at Harry and Harry had dared to hope he understood. "After all, she was the one who came to that meeting and stood up and made her announcement."

"I can still decide what I do," Harry said, and sighed a little when he saw the shadow that darkened Draco's face. This mattered so _much _to Draco, Harry thought wistfully. He didn't know why, but he was trying to grasp it. He didn't know if Draco was trying as hard to understand his side. "I can't control what she does. Honestly, I wouldn't want to. I wouldn't want that amount of control over _anyone_. But I can control what _I_ do."

"And what about me?" There was a flush high on Draco's cheeks, and his hands opened and closed in front of him as though he was trying to resist the temptation to seize something and chuck it at Harry's head. Harry almost wished he _would_. At least that would mean they were arguing on a plane where they both were equal.

Instead, Draco was ahead of him, or he was ahead of Draco. Harry thought he understood the ethics of the situation better, but Draco had a unique perspective, and Harry didn't understand why he couldn't grasp it himself.

"I don't know what you mean," Harry finally had to admit, and Draco crossed the distance between them in three easy strides and clasped his shoulders, shaking him as though he was a blade of grass. Harry raised his hands to touch Draco's wrists, but otherwise, he didn't try to stop him. He would just let Draco shake him and get it out of his system, he decided. That was the only way things could possibly make sense between them.

"Do you want to control _me_, too?" Draco was growling the words as he bent towards him, his breath fierce and warm in Harry's eyes. Harry thought of the dragon he had faced in the Tri-Wizard Tournament. "Or are you going to prevent me from defending you if she comes after you?"

"If she comes after me, of course I wouldn't," Harry said, and touched Draco's shoulder this time. "But she hasn't done that yet."

"What do you call _what she did_?" Draco's voice descended to a volume that really did seem to make the furniture around Harry vibrate.

Harry took a deep breath, and reminded himself that he really _didn't _understand everything that was going on here. "I don't call it an attack," he said. "An attack was the sort of thing she did when we were still married. Her words had a lot of power to hurt me then, and they still could."

Draco paused and looked at him. "Even though you don't love her anymore?"

This need for reassurance, at least, Harry thought he grasped. He reached up and took Draco's hand in his, bringing it to his lips so he could soundly kiss the back. "I don't love her the way I did," he said. "I don't think I'll ever feel neutral about her, or indifferent, but it's nothing compared to what I feel for you."

Draco's fingers closed around his for a second. Then he shook his head. "I understood the rationale that you used when you forbade me from going after Quillona, as little as I liked it. But I don't understand _at all _why you're forbidding me from doing the same bloody thing with Ex-Weasley."

Harry smiled in spite of himself at Draco's name for Ginny, but answered. "There's a child in both cases. Quillona's granddaughter could have suffered if you did something to her. And Ginny's child could suffer now."

"How would a child who isn't even born yet know—" Draco began, and then paused. Harry stared back at him in silence. He seemed to be doing that a lot lately, he thought. He only hoped that Draco would explain himself eventually, so he could stop.

"You only value children," Draco said. "Isn't that true? Not me, and not yourself, and you probably wouldn't _care _what I did to Quillona and Ginny if there wasn't a child in the case." His voice was soaring now, and he stepped forwards and poked Harry in the chest hard enough to hurt. "You probably care more for Scorpius than me."

Harry, at least, was no slouch at seeing why _that _would hurt Draco, and he resolved to attack it as soon as he could. "No," he said, reaching up and curling his hand around Draco's, gently forcing it down and away from his breastbone. "I do care about you. I don't know if I can call it—love yet, but it's getting there."

"But you care for Scorpius as well." Draco's breath rushed along, his eyes fixed on Harry's face as though someone had promised him death if he moved them.

"Of course. Not in the same way, and not more." Harry leaned forwards and looked into Draco's eyes. "But you're right that their children are the strongest argument against me doing something. I might like to. Hell, in the case of Quillona I don't even have lingering tenderness and a relationship with her family holding me back. But I have to remember who else would suffer for my revenge."

"You'll let them do whatever they like," Draco mumbled, glancing away. "You'll let them get _away _with whatever they like. They can do anything and you'll be unarmed and defenseless when it comes to attacks from them."

"No," Harry said. "I told you that there are times I might let you do what you like to Quillona." It was one of the things he and Draco had discussed last night. "An actual, physical attack is one of those circumstances."

Draco spun around and stared at him. "And an actual, physical attack _isn't what I was talking about_."

Harry bit his lip against the temptation to say something unfortunate, and slowly exhaled and murmured, instead, "All right. Tell me more about what you mean, and I'll do my best to listen."

* * *

Draco paused, but then decided that was the best he was going to get out of Harry right now. At least Harry wasn't storming around the room screaming about the inviolate rights of children and anyone who had a child, the way Draco had thought he might.

Of course, if he _had_, then Draco could have pointed out that he had a son and was therefore entitled to do whatever he wanted in turn, but it would have hurt Draco to hear Harry putting himself down like that.

Draco sat on the couch, and after a moment, Harry sat beside him. Draco reached out and carefully brushed hair away from Harry's neck, and Harry relaxed against him with a sigh. Draco wondered for a second how long it had been since he'd had someone to touch him with tenderness, and boiled with anger at Ex-Weasley all over again.

But he firmly pushed the thought away, because it wouldn't make what he wanted to do now easier, and murmured instead, "Why should they get away with blackening your name? Spreading rumors that you're a Dark wizard, or that you wanted to be unfaithful? There's no _reason _for them to. You decided to act because you were tired of getting all those stupid letters and Howlers, and you thought telling the truth might calm some people down. Well, I'm tired of watching you get hurt as a result of those two careless people."

"You didn't even know Ginny was going to show up at that meeting," Harry protested, although he didn't lift his head from Draco's shoulder. "You can't say that she's been going around hurting me for a long time. Or even a few weeks, the way Quillona has." His voice was clearer and stronger at the end, and Draco thought he might pull back and say something unfortunate in a second.

Draco took his hand and kept him there, while he murmured, "Of course she's been hurting you for weeks. Longer than that. Months. Years. Since the end of your marriage. Hasn't it been?"

Harry paused for an instant. Only that, but it was too long for someone who was perfectly fine, and both he and Draco knew it. Harry pulled back then and lifted his head like a wounded gazelle while he said, with perfect seriousness, "It was both our decision to divorce."

"I know that," said Draco. He kept his voice to a lazy, soft one, because if he showed too much of his anger, Harry might get really upset and decide it was too dangerous to let Draco anywhere near Ex-Weasley. "But she wanted a child, and she wanted to sleep with someone else to have a child—didn't she?—and she divorced you for something you couldn't help. It's not as though you went out and got hit with that hex to spite her."

"She wanted a child so much that she couldn't accept any solutions, and neither could I," Harry whispered. "Things we came up with—we were both so young, and stupid, and hasty."

Draco wasn't interested in hearing things that might excuse Ex-Weasley, because as far as he was concerned, there was nothing that would. He whispered back, "Are you serious about not wanting revenge, or is it just that you _think _you shouldn't?"

Harry looked away from him. Draco was right there, though, and more to the point, he had a hand on Harry's shoulder, and he could feel the long shudder that radiated through him, the way that he winced a second later and then winced again, as if from the pressure of thoughts that Draco couldn't trace.

"I knew it," Draco said. "You're ridiculously good and noble sometimes, but you're not a saint."

"I still don't want them hurt," said Harry. "Either of them." He hadn't looked up, but was tracing out a random pattern with one finger on the arm of the couch. "And I know that you could hurt them, badly. I don't want that." He turned to Draco.

"You want some kind of revenge, though," said Draco, and smiled at him. "My family happens to know some interesting things about Quillona's family. They wouldn't hurt her permanently, before you frown at me like that. Only the same way that you were hurt, the scandal she wanted to stir up. How can you object to that? Justice is going to be too young to remember it, anyway."

"She could still go after you," Harry mumbled, but Draco knew when his resolve was weakening.

"She could," Draco agreed. "But I have more money than she does, and my parents have better lawyers." He delighted in the faint smile that twitched at the edges of Harry's mouth, and pressed forwards with more confidence. "Well? What do you say?"

Harry traced his finger over that fascinating place on the couch arm again. "And you won't hurt Ginny?"

Draco sighed. "Not unless she does something other than this," he conceded. He would get some revenge, and that was enough to abate some of his anger, as was hearing Harry admit that he wanted some of the same things Draco did. "But if she goes to the press and makes some announcement about your infidelity or how badly you treated her or some such bollocks, then I consider her fair game."

"For scandal," said Harry. "Nothing else." He looked up. "And honestly, Draco, I meant what I said about being tired of having my name dragged through the mud. It's hard to think of a way to implicate her in scandal that wouldn't also implicate me."

Draco kissed the back of his hand in turn. "You have no idea where my talents in that direction lie," he breathed. "I promise, I'll give her something as nasty and eventually redeemable as the boils that you can get if you let your potion explode on you, the way Longbottom did that first day of class. Remember that?"

Harry's face lightened when he laughed. It wasn't Draco's fault that he had to lean forwards and kiss him when he did that, honestly, Draco thought. It was the fault of Harry's bright eyes and smiling lips.

Harry reached up a hand that moved slowly, as though uncertain of its welcome, and ran his fingers through Draco's hair. Draco shivered and gasped, and Harry's fingers dug in with more confidence, dragging Draco towards him, while his tongue dipped into Draco's mouth in the same moment.

Draco went with it, his heart banging and heat running through him in a thrill that he more usually associated with cold. But if there was anyone who could make him feel upside-down and remarkable sensations, then it was Harry.

He moved, and Harry moved, and soon Harry was lying completely flat on the couch while Draco leaned over him, and they kissed and kissed hard enough to make Draco's mouth numb. Well, as numb as he could be while everything about him was _flamingly alive, _he thought, and his fingers spread wide of their own accord, digging his nails into the tender flesh along Harry's ribs.

Harry hissed, his eyes lighting up and his lips parting, and Draco grinned and scratched again. Harry flipped them over, so far that Draco thought they were going to fall off the couch for a second, and then kissed him again, demandingly. Draco spread his legs and let Harry settle down into a place he might not even know he wanted to go, with his lack of experience with men.

Not that Draco had all _that _much. But he knew what he wanted now, and that was Harry. Harry gasping, panting, squirming, writhing, doing anything that would make him feel good, and bring pleasure to Draco at the same time.

Harry made a quiet noise and bit Draco on the hand. Draco laughed and bucked up against him, and this time Harry finally got the idea and began rubbing and bucking up and down on top of him in turn. Harry gasped, the way Draco had wanted, and reached down and thrust his hips in short jabs against Draco's.

The smack of their bones hurt, it almost hurt to hear, but Draco wasn't about to give this up. He spread his legs even more, and that somewhat cradled Harry's hips on skin instead of bone, and thrust back. The sheer _sensation _tumbling through his cock was almost enough to make him come.

But even better was the look in Harry's eyes as he stared down at him. If he had refused revenge, if he had sometimes made Draco feel that he wanted him mostly for his son, it was all swept away and redeemed now. No one could look as good as Harry at this moment, the way he looked on the brink of orgasm.

There was no one Draco wanted more, and that thought made him spiral, arch up, and come with a final thrust and shudder, echoed by one from above him.

Harry reared up his body, tensed, shook, and then came with a soft cry that sounded stunned at its own existence. Draco arched up and kissed him fiercely, and Harry kissed him back just as hard, his fingers scrabbling for a moment as though he had forgotten where he'd put his hands.

But he remembered before Draco would have had to do something drastic to remind him, and he held the back of Draco's head as though it was a precious thing, beaming at Draco with stupid soft eyes. Draco flung an arm around his back and rejoiced in the way they lay there, calm and confident, collapsed together and warm.

This was better than he had envisioned. But he hadn't known what it would be like then. He had only _wanted_.

_This is better, _he thought, as his eyes closed.

* * *

Harry decided that he really liked this.

It was better than discussions of revenge and things he didn't understand and Draco wanted him to understand any day, he thought. It wasn't possible to misunderstand the warmth between them as they lay together, and the way his hand rested on Draco's shoulder, and the loose way that Draco seemed to have wrapped all of his limbs around Harry.

And if he had worried about being attracted to a man, or having sex with a man, he decided in that moment that he didn't need to worry anymore. He would do just _fine_. If it was with Draco, and it would be, there was no question.

He leaned over to kiss Draco, who opened his eyes and peered blurrily at Harry, as if he couldn't understand why Harry was still awake. But then he groaned and gasped and returned to the kiss as though he was understanding why, and Harry smiled into it.

"Well, isn't _this _an interesting sight."

Harry would have jumped and shrieked and tried to preserve his virtue, but he already knew that he didn't have much left. He only turned his head and conjured a blanket he could tuck around both of them. Draco had gone rigid beneath them, but he seemed to have accepted that he couldn't go anywhere until Harry did, so he relaxed and turned to look.

Blaise Zabini stood in the doorway of the drawing room, his eyebrows poised as if they were going to grow wings and fly off his forehead. It had been years since Harry had seen him, but he had no trouble recognizing him. It was the wide grin, as if the sight of them together was inherently hilarious, that really gave it away, Harry thought. At least for someone who had listened as thoroughly to Draco's tales of the man as Harry had.

"Blaise." From the sound of his voice, Draco had recovered _some _dignity. "When did you get back? Where's Scorpius?"

"Three minutes ago, and Scorpius is upstairs playing with the toys I bought him." Harry snorted despite himself, and Zabini grinned at him. "Well, his dad is already playing with his toys. It's fair."

Draco pulled the blanket a little higher up around them. "You're to go away and forget this."

Harry expected Zabini to talk about how much he couldn't wait to use the Memory Charm. It was what Ron would have done. But instead, Zabini simply gave them both a lingering smile, said, "I am going to trade on this for _months_," and walked out the door.

Harry groaned and dropped his forehead down to rest on Draco's shoulder. "He won't blackmail you into doing things, would he?" he muttered.

"Of course not," Draco said. "We're better friends than that. He's much more likely to blackmail you."

Harry sighed.

But when he looked down into Draco's shining smile, he had to admit even blackmail would be worth it.


	41. Answering Back

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Forty-One-Answering Back_

"I'm sorry I wasn't there, mate. Got wounded in the middle of that last chase." Ron waved a hand at his bandaged leg. Harry had to admit, he snickered a little when he saw it.

"So you have a death wish too, right?" he asked, and poked Ron's ribs. "Because the last wound you had was also on the same leg."

They were sitting outside Ron and Hermione's house, on a sheltered wooden porch that Hermione had constructed using her own magic, as part of a project to show that wizards didn't need house-elves for building work. The roof that arched overhead had a few gaps in it, but not enough to make the slow, steady rain falling a nuisance. Ron sat in a chair with his leg propped up in front of him on a stool, and Harry lounged in a normal one next to him.

Ron didn't laugh. Harry looked at him, ready to apologize if Ron had taken his teasing about the death wish seriously, and saw Ron turning a stern gaze on him. He squirmed a little, uncomfortably.

"I still think I was right," said Ron. "You didn't have anything to live for, except your job. _We _weren't enough. Even Rose and Hugo aren't enough." He sucked in a bitter breath and went on. "But Malfoy's son is?"

This had been coming for a while, Harry reminded himself, to quell the immediate impulse to snap. He put down his cup of mango juice-Hermione's latest healthy obsession, recommended by her parents-and focused on Ron. "It's different when I can have a huge part in raising him," he said.

"You've had a huge part in raising Rose and Hugo!" Ron tried to sit up, and fell back with a little groan as his leg twinged.

"Do I have to firecall Hermione?" Harry asked sternly. Hermione had told him to do that if Ron seemed to be in pain or was showing signs of being agitated.

"No," said Ron, and hauled himself up and around again. Harry cast a Pain-Relieving Charm on Ron's knee without being asked. Ron was stubborn about not asking for things like that. Ron shot him an exasperated glance, and Harry simply blinked back at him. "Listen, mate. Why aren't our children enough for you? Why isn't our _family _enough for you?"

And there it was, the question that Ron had wanted to ask and hadn't. Hell, maybe even the question Andromeda had wanted to ask and hadn't. Harry sighed out a slow breath and turned so he was looking Ron in the eye.

"This is going to sound pretty bad," he said. "But it's the truth. There are some things about me that are true, but I've only figured them out recently."

Ron nodded warily. He was alert, his eyes fastened on Harry as though Harry was the criminal who was going to charge him waving a wand. But Harry couldn't blame him for that, either. He sighed again and continued.

"I want a family that's _mine_. Just _mine_. Not shared with a bunch of other people. I have to share Teddy with Andromeda and a lot of people she talks about that I don't even know. I didn't know Ted that well. I didn't even know Tonks as well as I would like. And she talks about Black ancestors, and I have to sort of nod along. I can never know them from books and tapestries and portraits the way she knows them."

"But you know us," said Ron immediately. "And you know any of us would be willing to share anything with you."

"Even after Ginny?" Harry asked.

Ron hesitated.

Harry nodded. "Exactly. If I'd asked your mum to invite me to the Burrow as often as she did before the divorce, it wouldn't have been fair to anyone else. It would have made your family have to choose between me and Ginny, and you can't be expected to do that. And neither of us is mature enough not to fight at family dinners."

"When you told me that you were going to say some depressing things about yourself, you were right," Ron muttered.

Harry winced a little. "Yeah, but I think it's better to know it and say it than to end up being surprised by it." He leaned his chin on his fist and looked steadily at Ron. "You know what I mean?"

"Just because you were cautious about Ginny didn't mean _we _couldn't have helped you," said Ron. "She doesn't even come over here and visit us all that often."

"And how much of that is because _I _do?" Harry countered at once. "You might not care that much about seeing Corner, but won't you want to see your new niece or nephew? How are we going to arrange things when she has a child you want to see, and you don't want to hurt either her _or _me?"

Ron hesitated. "Does that mean you're going to stop considering us your friends when she has the baby?" he whispered.

Harry rolled his eyes at him. "Of course not. It only means that I know how difficult it's going to be for you, and I don't want to spend the rest of my life tiptoeing around because you're my family _and _hers. I want to have a house I can go to where I know I'm not going to be intruding. I want to have someone to spend time with who isn't related to Ginny by blood, and isn't only part of the Black family, either. And Scorpius likes me, and Draco..."

"Yeah, you don't need to make it explicit," said Ron hastily, which made Harry grin. "All right, I reckon I can see that. But how are you going to be able to consider Scorpius yours more than you can with Teddy, or Rose and Hugo?"

"Because Draco wants me there without divided loyalties," Harry said simply. "His ex-wife visits sometimes, but not often, and from the way Draco describes her, she doesn't care that much about _raising _Scorpius. She might be offended if I tried to describe myself as Scorpius's blood parent, but Merlin knows I can't do that anyway. I'm not a woman. And precisely because she cares less, it'll make any scenes that do happen less awkward than they would be with Ginny."

"My mum would always welcome you," said Ron stubbornly.

Harry held his eyes. "When a grandkid's in the picture?"

It took a moment, but Ron's gaze wavered and fell. "Yeah, well," he muttered. "If you were _both _more mature, this wouldn't have happened."

"I know that," Harry said, as patiently as he could. "But right now, I'm the one who's trying to move on with my life and be happy, and Ginny's the one who's showing up at my announcements and trying to drag me down again. Why can't she go and be happy with the life she has?"

"Because revealing that you can't have children is kind of revealing one of her secrets, too," Ron said.

Harry snorted. "What? That she divorced me because she cared more about having children than about having me as a husband?"

"You can't blame her for that!"

"I didn't reveal anything that she had to have anything to do with," said Harry tiredly. He could see why Draco had raised his eyebrows at him when Harry had told him he was going to Ron and Hermione's house this morning. Yes, his friends meant well, and they would never hate him, but Ron simply couldn't resist the impulse to defend his little sister. "The newspapers have always been more interested in me, anyway. She could have stayed home, and then Skeeter wouldn't be writing about her."

"But they still asked her questions about the divorce. _Someone _would have written about her." Ron leaned down and picked up a battered _Prophet _up from the floor next to his chair. "Did you see what they said about her?"

"Not really, no," said Harry coolly. "I was a little more engaged reading what they said about me."

"They said some pretty awful things," said Ron, although he was hesitating now, as if the Hermione-voice he had sometimes described as his conscience was telling him to hold back. "I wouldn't be surprised if she's angrier than ever now."

"She didn't need to come there," said Harry. "Why did she?"

"Because it _did _involve her, if you were talking about the reason for your divorce."

Harry put one hand up and turned his face away. Ron shut up, but still watched him warily. Harry stared at the far side of Ron and Hermione's garden, a wall of climbing yellow flowers that he didn't think either of them had planted, until his eyes blurred from tracking the motion of raindrops past the blossoms.

Then he turned back, and said simply, "I don't give a fuck what they write about her. Either way. I'm not going to try and make it better, and I'm not going to try and make it worse. Tell her whatever you like. I don't want to talk to her, I don't want to see her, she can do what she wants, but she'd better stay away from me, Draco, and Scorpius."

"That sounds like a threat," said Ron, squinting at him.

Harry raised his hand and tugged deliberately, once, at his hair. Then he said, "She didn't give a fuck about me for three years. She can go right back there. And yeah, you ought to know that if she tries to drag my name through the mud, or Draco's, or Scorpius's, she'll get attacked. I know she's your sister and you love her, but this is exactly why I need another family I can live with and love."

"You think it'll last, then?" Ron was sitting back against the chair, one hand on the _Prophet _as though he planned to use it for a shield against the words Harry was going to say.

Harry shrugged. "My marriage to Ginny didn't, so you think this won't? Who can say, Ron. I'm going to try." He stood up. "And I think I'm going to go away now before one of us says something we'll regret."

"I only want to tell you that you'll always have a place with us," said Ron, his voice low.

"Maybe later," said Harry, keeping his head turned away. "Not right now."

And he strode out of the house. He could feel himself shaking as he went. He knew that Ron and Hermione had no reason to like Draco, but they had no reason to insist that Harry forgive Ginny, either. If Ron had only expressed doubt about Draco because he was a _Malfoy_, Harry could have accepted that and argued back against that.

But fuck no, he was not going to forgive Ginny and accept her accusations and take back the truth about him not being able to have children because a few people wrote nasty things in the paper about her. It would blow over-for her-by the time she had her baby. And hopefully, if she didn't like the results of this exposure, she could shut the fuck up and remember that the next time she was tempted to speak out in public.

_Listen to how much you sound like Draco._

Harry shrugged a little. That was another way Draco had been good for him, pointing out to him that Harry could demand at least as much as anyone else. And if he wanted to be left alone and have other people respect his privacy, then he should be able to have that. The newspaper reporters, no, not right now, because Harry had been the one to reach out to them.

But Ginny? She had what she'd always wanted. _Go and rejoice in it, _Harry thought as he Apparated, _and stop bothering me._

* * *

"Thank you for making the time to see me."

Draco kept his head down as he moved into Anne Quillona's home. Or one of her homes, he knew. She had a house in London where she was raising her granddaughter, but she had told Draco to meet her in a tiny cottage on the outskirts of Hogsmeade, where she said they could "talk in private."

The woman slammed the door shut behind her and turned to face him, folding her arms. She was as sharp and spare as Draco had imagined she was from the pictures in the paper, and from what he remembered seeing her occasionally in his childhood. And she was just as aggressive. She tried to loom over him, and when Draco gazed back at her in a posture of perfect indifference to that particular intimidation technique, she turned away with a huff and began slamming cabinet doors closed.

"You'll have to excuse the lack of tea, but I don't keep house-elves here," she said over her shoulder.

_Of course not, _Draco thought. _That would be too polite. _But he didn't need tea. It wasn't like he intended to stay.

He quietly took out the signed document his father had given him, and held it in one hand until her hostile staring and restless movements had died down, and she was facing him with folded arms and a slight sneer. Then he held it out to her.

"What's this?" Quillona took the document and turned it around. "The agreement not to bother my granddaughter and to apologize that I've been waiting for Potter to deliver? Strange that he would do it in writing and not himself, but-"

Her voice simply ended, her eyes locked on Lucius's neat handwriting. Draco clasped his hands behind his back and smiled a little. He was going to _enjoy _this.

Quillona looked up, and her body and face were both tensed as if she was going to charge forwards. "What is this?" she whispered harshly. "Do you think anyone is going to believe this farrago of nonsense?"

"First of all, it's true," said Draco helpfully. "Second, even if it was nonsense, why not? After all, the papers believed everything that you threw at them about Harry, even though it had no basis. They only want scandal. That's what everyone who tries to use the press against him forgets. The papers are just as eager to turn on them as on him. They only want victims. The reporters don't care who they are."

Draco paused, and then took a single step forwards, enough to make Quillona bristle at him without having the justification to attack that Draco knew she was looking for. "What everyone forgets," he said softly, meeting her eyes, "is that he has someone who's going to fight for him now. He forbore to turn the press on his enemies out of kindness before. But I have none, not where his enemies are concerned."

Quillona folded the paper hard enough to cut her hand with its edge. She was still engaged in snarling at him. "You can't think that anyone is going to _believe _this?"

"That's the same accusation you made, and which I already answered," said Draco, pausing and giving her a languid smile. "Would you like to try a different one? That might give you an escape. Probably not, but one should always have hope."

"I never met someone called Fox in my life," said Quillona in disgust, and made as if to tear the parchment.

Draco shrugged. "Strange, because my father signed that document in the Ministry's Department of Law and Records, and the parchment wouldn't have taken the signature if it wasn't true. And another copy exists in the Ministry department, where we can get at it if something unfortunate happens to the first one. Like an _accidental _tearing, for example."

Quillona paused. Her eyes rested on Draco, who only looked back, smiling slightly. He wondered for a moment why Harry had found this woman so intimidating. It had to be his terribly earnest feeling for her granddaughter, because she wasn't tall or smart enough to really cow him.

"I can dispute this," said Quillona carefully. "I can go to the Ministry Department and write down and sign my own version of events."

"You could do that," said Draco. "If you are sure, you know, _absolutely _sure that the truth-charmed parchment would take your version of events the way it took my father's. And since Miriam Fox was right there to add her signature to the bottom of this particular document, then you might have trouble disputing it."

From the way Quillona jumped and turned the parchment around, Draco knew she had totally missed Fox's signature before this and hadn't simply been ignoring it. Her eyes when she raised her head again were poisonous, but Draco didn't miss the slight tremor in her fingers where they clutched the parchment. Quillona saw him looking and immediately closed her hand down, eyes shutting at the same time.

"Yes," said Draco quietly. "Perhaps you shouldn't have been as obsessed with the family honor as you were. Perhaps you should have raised your daughter's 'base-born' child honestly and openly for the world to see."

"You can have no conception of how it was," said Quillona sullenly, without looking up. "If you did, you would not stand here and scold me like the self-righteous idiot you seem determined to become."

Draco clucked his tongue. "I can have a pretty fair conception of how it was, from what my father explained to me. Your daughter had an illegitimate child. You didn't want to raise it. You gave her to this Miriam Fox, a friend of a friend who had wanted a child. And then you decided that merely concealing her existence wasn't enough. You had to erase it. You-"

"I _did not_."

Draco chuckled, and said nothing. Quillona knew as well as he did that the parchment might have taken Lucius's version of events if it was merely something he believed to be true, without it actually being so, but in that case, Fox's signature-the signature of someone who did know the whole truth-would have dissolved the words and the parchment itself. For them to exist on the same piece of paper, they both had to be real.

"So," said Draco. "Do you want this to be blazoned forth? There's the very real chance you would be arrested, you know, as well as have your reputation destroyed."

Quillona's eyes opened, staring and pale. "And if Miriam believed this, why hasn't she gone to the Aurors before this?"

"Because," said Draco, and he let his voice drip his contempt, "she had the same scruples that my Harry does. She wanted to spare the rest of your family suddenly being deprived of their mother and grandmother. And since your _other _granddaughter came to live with you, she's hesitated even further. She didn't know whether the Ministry might not take Justice from you and place her with someone who would be worse for her, since Miriam saw no chance that she would get to adopt the child."

Draco came a step forwards and whispered, "I have no patience for that kind of thinking. _I _wouldn't feel safe leaving a child with someone who sent her first granddaughter a dish of poisoned sweets, for the enormous crime of being born outside a marriage."

"I did not," Quillona said. "There is no proof. If the girl got sick and there was no chance of Fox affording a Healer, that is not my fault."

"Just enough lack of proof and hesitation and Gryffindor intentions to hold Fox back," said Draco quietly. "Not to mention not having the money to hire an advocate if she had to. But not for much longer. If you don't back up, I think Fox is going to positively _revel _in bringing you down now that she has the support of a powerful family behind her. Watch out, Quillona."

This time, the woman at least said nothing. Draco turned towards the door, and then snapped his fingers a little and turned back. Quillona looked up at him, her face dull and blank with hatred.

"You should hope Harry never finds out about this," said Draco. "He's hell on people who mistreat children."

Quillona's fingers closed down again. Draco smiled and slipped out the door.

He was sure of his victim, after spending only a few minutes with Quillona. No, she wouldn't be able to hold herself back, not after indulging her temper and spite for so long. She would attack either Fox or Harry again, or possibly Draco himself, and then justice would be served for a murder that should, Draco thought, have been brought to trial long ago.

_There are days I have no patience with Gryffindors, _he thought, and went home to the Gryffindor who was worth having patience with.

* * *

"You were right."

Draco looked up into Harry's eyes, his own eyebrows rising. "That sounds like a good thing, but I'd like to know what I was right about," he said, and set his napkin aside.

Harry looked down at his hands, resting next to his plate, and wondered again if he should say something about this. It was fine to discuss it with Ron, to make it clear that he would prefer never to talk about Ginny with his friends again, but did that give him the right to abuse her in front of Draco?

"What is my dad right about?" Scorpius asked, leaning one elbow on the table and watching Draco out of the corner of his eye. All Draco had to do was raise a particular eyebrow at his son and the elbow came off again.

Harry had to smile, and remember that Scorpius didn't know a thing about this debacle with Ginny, and Harry would honestly rather it stayed that way. But he could still talk to both of them at once, without leaving Scorpius out of the conversation or denying it to Draco.

"Something we discussed the other day," he said, looking back at Draco. "Sometimes I don't know if I should get even with someone who hurt me or not, you know? Getting even can be a bad thing sometimes."

"_I _know," said Scorpius, with a world-weary air that made Harry laugh a little before he could stop himself. But Scorpius was too caught up in his role to notice. "Daddy tells me all the time that I can't get even with the elves, and Uncle Blaise says that I can't get even with the Muggles when they bump into me." He shook his head. "And I can't get even with Teddy. He's bigger than me."

"It sounds," said Draco to Scorpius, while keeping one eye openly on Harry, "that you just don't have the chance to get even with them. Uncle Harry had a chance, and he was going to reject it."

"Really?" Scorpius stared at Harry as if he had been told Harry was going to reject dessert. "Why would you do _that_?"

"Because revenge doesn't always make you a good person," said Harry simply. "And I want to be a good person."

"Huh," said Scorpius, in the tone of someone thinking about it, and not finding anything to admire in that viewpoint.

"But Uncle Harry said I was right," Draco murmured, glancing rapidly back and forth between Harry and Scorpius as if he didn't want to miss a fleeting expression on either of their faces. "So I persuaded him to take a little revenge."

"I still don't want to hunt someone down and get even," said Harry, to which Draco made a face. "But I realized I could defend myself when someone talked about that person, and walk away if I wanted to."

Draco's face relaxed into a smile. Harry attended to that so much that it took him a moment to realize what Scorpius was saying.

"That sounds like a pretty boring revenge."

Harry laughed despite himself. "It sort of is. But at least it means that I can do what I need to do and be happy." He reached across the table and ruffled Scorpius's hair before he could duck. "And I can be here with you, and not wonder whether it's the right thing."

Scorpius asked a question that Harry answered, but he could never afterwards remember what it was. All his being was absorbed with the contented glow in Draco's eyes.


	42. The Pace of Pleasure

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Forty-Two—The Pace of Pleasure_

"Do you want to? Tonight?"

Draco's voice was so soft. So was the hand that he smoothed over Harry's shoulder and down, as if he was about to caress away his hair and his spine and his flesh, melting everything with a simple touch. Harry leaned back against him with a sigh, and Draco supported him with a delighted murmur, leaning Harry against the wall and holding him there as he stroked.

_Sometimes it's the simple touches that are the most powerful._

Harry sighed and stood there with drooping eyelids, wondering, waiting for a moment or movement that would tell him the answer to the question. He knew he could say no, always. That was the point. Draco would leave without being disappointed and ask the question again, later.

Well, there was a possible wrongness there. Draco would probably be disappointed, probably wanted to sleep with Harry now, or there would have been no point in asking what he did.

"Harry?" Draco asked against his earlobe, something he almost never did, and that let Harry know how long he had been standing there and pondering in silence.

Harry thought about it, and thought about the pleasure that thrilled through his own nerves when he touched Draco, and thought about the fact that, more than he wanted to preserve some sort of privacy or modesty, he wanted to go with Draco and see what happened next. And he didn't want Draco to go away disappointed.

"Yes," he said softly, and turned around, perversely enjoying the way that Draco's eyes widened with the obviously unexpected answer. He opened his arms, and Draco surged into them after a moment. Harry took even more pleasure in kissing him and making Draco stumble back with a gasp and a moan.

And then he just took pleasure. Because that was what he wanted, what both of them wanted, and what they were both suddenly striving towards with equal indulgence.

* * *

Draco had been sure Harry would say no. And then, when he _did _say yes, Draco had to wonder if it was because Harry felt sorry for him, if there was something he was missing here, and if he shouldn't have pressed Harry.

_No_. He wouldn't doubt this. Not when Harry was currently doing his best to kiss Draco's teeth out. There had to come a point when he let go of his doubt, his fear, his sometimes outright _terror _that Harry wouldn't want to be with him, and simply enjoyed.

Draco wrapped his arms around Harry and steered them towards Harry's bedroom door. It was instinctual. They were _right there, _after all; Draco had walked Harry to bed like he usually did, and his own rooms were all the way across the bloody Manor. They would do things here, like civilized people.

Harry did stiffen a little when Draco fumbled with the catch of the door, and Draco paused. He still had to give Harry time to back out, if he wanted; there was not only no reason to force him, there was no way Draco could do it.

But Harry took a deep, huffing breath that seemed to scorn his own inability to continue, and pushed Draco against the door so it fell open.

They stumbled a few laughing steps, and Draco came near to measuring his full length on the carpet. But he managed to catch himself and spin them around so Harry was the one who landed on the bed. Draco crawled up beside him and spent a few moments trailing his fingers over Harry's stomach and chest, leaving his shirt on.

Oh, _yes_. Harry's eyes went a deeper, quieter color, and his open mouth expelled a silence that was more telling than a sound would have been. He reached out and caught Draco's wrist, and traced Draco's hand downwards once more, searching for something. Draco wondered if it was one particular sensitivity, one particular shudder in muscles that must be dying sometimes for a pleasant touch, instead of the hostility so much of the world greeted Harry with—

_There _it was. And Draco recognized the small, soft mound for what it was, of course, when he concentrated. One of Harry's nipples. They were apparently more sensitive than Draco's were.

With a smile that probably gave Harry no real impression of what he would do next, Draco seized Harry's left one, and _twisted. _

Harry's mouth flew open on a single long sigh. He arched his back, his eyes blank, and his hips rose and fell for a moment as though thrusting against an invisible lover. Draco quickly angled himself into position. _He _was going to be the lover, and he had no desire to compete, even against his own hands.

Harry whispered, "Do that again," voice hoarse and dry.

Draco smiled, and did it again.

Harry arched again, thrust again. His voice was pleading, but he had no one to plead to. _Except me, _Draco thought, and his gentleness from before was gone as he pinched and rasped down Harry's nipple again and again. _And I have no time for mercy._

When Harry's nipples must be sore and bruised, and he was beginning to pant heavily enough to make it sound as though he was scraping his lungs, Draco stopped. Harry at once turned his head towards him, and whispered, "More."

"Yes, I thought that might put you in the mood," Draco whispered, a little idiotically, because it wasn't like he had known how much that turned Harry on. But Harry wasn't in a position where he wanted to question anything. Draco knew that much. Harry reached out and lifted Draco's face, holding his mouth close, kissing him hard enough to make Draco's head spin.

And then he was the one drawing Draco down onto the bed, and Draco realized that his assumed position of more experienced lover might not count for that much after all.

Not if the way Harry was smiling was any indication.

* * *

Harry began with exploring Draco's chest, _after _his shirt was off.

Harry's nipples were sore and twisted, and Draco had done that without ever undressing him. But then, he was experienced with several people, and Harry wasn't. He thought he needed an advantage if he was going to make Draco melt in the same way.

Draco let him take it, his hair spread around his face in a fetching (and utterly unreliable) halo, his breathing soft and regular. At least until Harry trailed a finger down the center of his breastbone, watching closely all the while, and Draco's eyes widened and his breath became a soft moan.

"Yes, you like that," Harry whispered, and he liked it so much himself so that it was hard to tell who he was talking to.

He did like touching Draco, a lot more than he had thought he would. For him, there had been Ginny, and then not much of anything else. Everything he had, he'd thought, he was going to compare to Ginny. For the rest of his days.

"I do," Draco gasped back at him, mouth open and eyes open and _everything _open, his hands reaching out as if he could hold onto Harry and make him press harder. Harry sat back with a thoughtful little cluck of his tongue.

"_Good_," Harry said, and he bent down and took one of Draco's nipples in his mouth.

There was a lot of scattering and twisting on the bed, and Draco gave a sound that was almost agonized, a half-shout. Harry smiled around the nipple and sucked harder and harder. He was going to give Draco something to think about, the way Draco had given him.

Draco abruptly pushed him back, though. Harry supposed he'd bitten him and caused him discomfort, but Draco simply rolled him over and said, in a voice as dark as the soft shadows flickering from the fire, "_My turn_."

Harry's resistance melted at the thought of what that might mean. He sighed and flung his arms over his head, turning so Draco could bite or suck at him or do whatever he wanted, at whatever pace of pleasure.

Draco took his time slowly moving forwards, his eyes locked on Harry's. Harry thought he might wriggle himself to death in anticipation, but it ended, at least a little, when Draco reached out and slowly took off his shirt.

Harry had to close his eyes as Draco pulled it over his head, and not only because the cloth briefly scraped against his face. This was something more beautiful than he had envisioned, even with the sportive, playful rivalry that he and Draco had enjoyed in the last few minutes, even with the pleasure roused in him by Draco's touches. Draco had laid the shirt aside with something that was kin to reverence and was slowly, gradually trailing his fingers up and down Harry's chest, around and over his muscles. Harry's breathing was speeding up to match the pace of the fingers.

He wanted—he wanted. He wanted without clearly knowing what he wanted. He reached out with his own clumsy, glancing hand, and it bounced off Draco's chest and down onto Harry's own groin.

Draco, watching him, smiled. He sat back and said, "I'm all yours. Where would you like to begin?"

"I thought you said it was your turn." Harry's voice was soft, dry as dust. He licked his lips, thought of trying to pretend that Draco didn't affect him that way, and then gave up.

"I know," said Draco, and inclined his head. "But I find that my pleasure is to give you yours, right now. I ask you again." His smile was handsome and utterly devastating. Harry hoped that he didn't figure that out. It would make him _far _too successful at manipulating all sorts of conversations. "Where would you like to begin?"

Harry sat up and fastened his mouth to Draco's like a starving man, and reached into Draco's pants.

The startled noise Draco made, and how quickly he backed up and nearly fell off the edge of the bed, was satisfying beyond _words_.

* * *

Harry was unexpectedly forceful as he handled Draco's cock, even though they'd done this once before. Draco supposed he might have lost his own memory of it. That kind of sheer pleasure wasn't easily encompassed within a merely human mind.

_And you are babbling, and being silly._

But he thought it anyway, and Harry was the only one of the lovers he'd had that he knew would never mock at something like that. He reached out and caught Harry's wrist, and Harry slowed down and nipped demandingly at the curve of Draco's ear.

"Come on, touch me," Harry said, and angled his body, lifting his hips, so that his groin was within easy reach.

Draco found his hand reaching down as if guided, although later, he couldn't remember Harry actually holding onto his wrist. It just seemed like an external force, anyway. Then he was touching, his fingers were _there, _and he gasped as he felt the smoothness, the way that Harry's cock slid shining and dripping through his fingers.

Harry made a groaning noise and thrust forwards. Draco squeezed, and knew in a flash that this would probably end just like that night on the couch when Blaise had caught them in a compromising position. They hadn't taken their clothes off that night, either; Draco's embarrassment had come from _knowing _his friend had seen his flushed face and the wet spot on his trousers, and Harry on top of him, and had no doubt whatsoever about what they'd been doing.

And he wanted this night to be different. Special.

"No," he whispered, drawing back, and looking beneath his eyelashes at Harry.

Harry was drawn so tight himself, it took him several seconds to come back to earth. But then his eyes flashed, and he leaned across the bed to grip and pinion Draco's hands. "Why not?" he snapped. "If you said that I got my way tonight, and this is what I want—"

"Answer me one thing," said Draco, and stroked the tense back of Harry's hand with what fingers he could move. "If we both come in our pants this time again, are you going to have the strength to fuck tonight?"

Harry's breath was so harsh that he sounded as if he was drowning, and he coughed a second later. Draco blinked at him, concerned. If it upset Harry that much, then of course he would go along with what Harry wanted.

"I never thought of it like that," Harry whispered harshly, and then sucked in more air and nodded. "Yes. I do want—something different than what happened last time." And the way he let go of Draco's hands and reached up to play with his hair rather than his groin at least convinced Draco that he meant what he said, even if he might not be able to bring himself to say the exact, crude words yet.

Draco turned his head and captured Harry's lips, startling him into exclaiming something. Draco didn't need to listen to it, didn't _permit _himself to listen to it. He tumbled them back onto the bed instead, and Harry was once again alive in his arms, turning himself around and resuming the kiss with a concentrated ferocity. Draco shivered a little. It was partially a shiver of pleasure, but more one of anticipation. If Harry was that fierce in this little interaction, what would he do later?

What he would do was perfectly obvious in a second. He reached out and trailed a hand aggressively down Draco's chest, squeezing now and then, and then he flung his arm across Draco's groin and touched his arse suggestively.

Draco nodded, his throat full, and sat up and pulled back so they could both get their trousers and pants off. Harry's hands and eyes were hot enough to burn him all the way.

* * *

_Do you know what you're doing? _The voice was vaguely identifiable in Harry's head, screeching. It might have been Aunt Petunia's voice, which Harry sometimes thought was the source of all those stupid silent accusations that woke him up on a regular basis.

_No. But Draco does, _Harry thought, and shook his trousers and pants off with a snap of cloth before he turned expectantly to Draco and raised his eyebrows.

The voice was silenced, and Draco smiled slightly and rolled over onto his stomach. The smooth expanse of his back was more wonderful than Harry had thought it would be. He made a sound of startled appreciation and stroked down Draco's spine, and Draco arched his back and made a rattling noise that could be described as a purr.

"Yes, well, there are more important areas of me to touch than my back," Draco hinted after a moment, when Harry had almost fallen into the stroking. "For example, you might touch my cock." He wriggled his arse a second later, another suggestion.

Harry bent over and kissed the back of his neck, and murmured, "What did you want me to use for lube?" He at least knew about lube. Give him that, he thought, to the silent voice in his head and anything or anyone else that might accuse him of not knowing enough.

"The potion on the bedside table," said Draco, with a strained laugh.

Harry sat up and turned around, staring. "I thought no one else was in here," he said, and stumbled over the words. "I mean, I thought this was only my bedroom right now." His skin crawled, he had to admit, at the thought of a house-elf popping up in his bedroom and putting lube in the table, no matter how thoughtfully.

"It is," said Draco. "I put it there a—few nights ago. I was overconfident, I suppose you could say."

Harry turned back, startled now by the tone Draco's voice had taken on. He was sucking his lip and looking at Harry like a little boy who expected to be scolded. Harry had to snort. The attitude was so ridiculous compared to the ones that Draco _had _been taking on, he reached out and smoothed down Draco's hair with one hand. Then he shook his head and picked up the lube.

"I don't _mind_," he said. "I just couldn't figure it out." And he undid the top of the flask, and inhaled the soft scent of the potion, so thick with daisies that Harry almost expected some kind of white paste when he took it out.

Draco turned his head more fully towards him, as Harry smeared the potion over his fingers. "You have to make sure that your fingers and your cock are fully coated with it," Draco whispered. "And then some."

Harry nodded. He had suspected something like that, and he was just as glad that Draco had said it, since Harry thought his voice would have choked off if he'd had to ask. He reached into the flask once more and made sure that his fingers were so coated that they looked like trailing clouds when they came out again.

"Now reach down to my arse," Draco muttered, and Harry started and looked up. He supposed that he had been sitting there for a long time staring at his fingers, and Draco was moving his arse impatiently.

Harry reached as confidently as he could for Draco's rear. It seemed—he wanted to touch it, and yet, at the same time, opening that small entrance was strange enough to make his heart pound and leap. He had never done something like this with Ginny. Why would he have?

Draco made a soft noise when Harry slid his fingers into his arse, which made Harry wince. But Draco tilted his head back, with just enough of his face turned to Harry that Harry could see his eyes rolling, and muttered, "Get _on _with it."

"I'm so glad that we're not trying to be romantic about it or anything," Harry snapped, as he slid his second finger into Draco's arse.

"We can be romantic when you're inside me and pumping away," Draco snapped back. "Right now, you need to be further on your way to doing that."

Harry caught his breath and moaned out without realizing what he was doing. Yes, he could see himself doing that. More to the point, he could _feel _himself doing that, and he had to press his cock fiercely against the sheets for a second to prevent simply spurting everywhere and putting a messy end to the evening.

Draco had a talent, he thought as he slid his index finger in. Of making Harry want things he had never known he wanted, of making Harry think of things he had never thought of until him.

That didn't mean it was a bad talent. Draco had taught Harry things about himself that he might never have explored if he had remained silent and dedicated to his job, if he was still an Auror with no hope for raising a child with someone else, if he had remained—

_Ethan_.

For the first time since Draco had exposed Ethan's secret, Harry had to admit that he didn't really miss him, or look back to the time when he had been Ethan in his journal with longing. He had thought, then, that he was as well as he could be again. He had had an imaginary family, true, but they were a family that was all his own in a way that no one else could ever be again. He might not have been happy, he could realize now. But he had been content, and he wouldn't have bothered anyone.

Draco had stomped into his life and changed that, and Harry didn't want to change back.

For _once, _he could enter onto a new life without thinking that he had to regret the old one, the way he had regretted the end of his marriage and the end of the deception he had practiced on Draco.

Smiling, he slid his fingers more fully into Draco's arse.

* * *

It was so obvious that Harry had never done anything like this before, Draco wondered why so many of the papers insisted on calling Harry someone who had a dozen lovers, someone who wanted to take more people to bed than he had room.

Then Draco snorted to himself. Someone else would have only known the truth about Harry if they'd seen him in the same private circumstances that Draco had. And Draco knew he, himself, would never permit that. So it seemed only right that the papers would continue to write the same rubbish about Harry that they always had.

"Something funny?" Harry asked abruptly, as his fingers stopped moving in Draco's arse. "Or something wrong?"

Draco sighed and rolled his head back on his neck, opening himself up, relaxing himself further. And Harry could read his body language, luckily, because he let his fingers wander deeper, murmuring to himself for a moment as though Draco could translate Potterspeak.

"I'm just glad that you're here, doing this," Draco whispered.

There was a long pause, during which Draco wondered what else he might have done wrong without meaning to, and then Harry leaned over him and kissed the nape of his neck. "And I'm glad that you're here doing this with me," he whispered back.

Draco's throat closed up, and he only managed to nod about ten minutes later when Harry asked him if that was enough preparation. It shouldn't have been that long, but considering Harry had never done this before and still had to coat his own cock…

And, well, Draco didn't mind how long this lasted.

Harry finally began to slide into him. He went so slowly that Draco wasn't sure it was happening until he felt a long drag when Harry seemed to panic and slide back out. Draco reached back a hand, searching without being able to see properly, clasping something that felt like an arm, and slapping it.

"Come the fuck on and fuck me," Draco whispered.

Harry stilled once, and then began to push steadily forwards again. Draco dropped his head into his hands, exhaling hard. It was one thing to know all about the proper procedure and be able to instruct Harry, and another thing to feel _Harry _doing this.

"Yes," Draco said, and didn't even know what he was saying it to, until he felt Harry settled into him, and Harry whispered it back into his ear.

"Yes," they said together, and then they began to move together, Draco lifting himself as much as he could to meet Harry's thrusts, Harry pausing only once to pull Draco up to his knees before he began to thrust again.

The pillows strained and blurred in front of Draco's eyes. He knew Harry was actually the one doing most of the work, but he panted and moaned, and his sounds slipped out of his mouth without permission, and actually, this did feel like hard exertion.

But such _pleasure _welled through him that he hardly cared.

They were joined, they were bound by it, the pleasure that washed back and forth. Draco could hear Harry hissing steadily through his teeth as he thrust, and Draco didn't think he knew he was doing it, or what those small noises were doing to Draco. He could feel Harry's hands roaming and stroking up his back in small flares of warmth, and then dropping down to hold Draco so he could thrust again.

It was spectacular. It was burning. It was so _intense _that Draco wasn't surprised when he couldn't hold, and began to come.

Harry did the same thing a moment after, his teeth still clenched down, from the sound of it, and the release of warmth in his arse made Draco want to come again. He reached back and grasped what was definitely Harry's arm this time, and dragged him down despite Harry's indignant, "_Ouch_," kissing him as soon as his face was in the proper position.

Harry gasped, but gave himself to the kiss, even with his body trembling the way it was and his tongue almost vibrating. Then he pulled himself free from Draco and sat down on the edge of the bed, staring at him.

Draco didn't mind the staring, not when it was as appreciative as this. He reached out, and his fingers closed in exhaustion around Harry's.

"I really liked that," said Harry.

And he had chosen exactly the right thing to say. Draco leaned his cheek on their joined hands, and said simply, "I did, too," and basked in Harry's wondering smile.


	43. Blended

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Forty-Three—Blended_

"Can I have a moment of your time, then?"

Harry turned around and leaned against the door of his office. He had kept limited hours since his confession that he couldn't have children, and he hadn't really expected anyone to approach him this soon after it, either. Or else he'd thought they would track him down in Malfoy Manor.

Harry snorted a moment later as he remembered Draco's magnificent wards. Yes, well, perhaps he should have anticipated an ambush a bit like this.

"If you want," he said indifferently to the brown-haired woman approaching him. She had large blue eyes that sparkled with a charm, Harry was sure. They looked too much like Dumbledore's, and Harry thought Dumbledore was the only one who could ever manage that twinkle naturally. "But I don't have anything to say except what I've already said."

"My name is Kalina Drumwell, working for the _Chimera's Herald_," the woman introduced herself quickly, waving around her parchment and quill as if Harry needed more confirmation that she was a reporter. "I only have a few questions." She sidled towards Harry and lowered her voice. "You see, Mrs. Corner gave me an exclusive interview."

Harry held his face straight, and didn't let the emotions he wanted to show out. At least Ginny giving an interview to a small paper like the _Chimera's Herald, _known for publishing things only slightly less strange than the _Quibbler _did, was better than going to the _Prophet_.

But his heart still struggled, and not because he was really that afraid of what Ginny had said. He was afraid of what Draco might claim in retaliation.

"Won't you come in?" he asked, and opened his door. Drumwell trailed him inside, looking around as if she expected to see photographs of children all over the wall and Harry giving them longing glances.

The tame inside of the office must have disappointed her, because she turned back to Harry as soon as she'd taken a seat and poised her quill in the air. "So. You must want to reply to what Mrs. Corner said, of course."

"How can I do that?" Harry asked, taking his own chair and stretching out so that he would at least look lazy and contented if she took a picture of him. "I have no idea what she said."

Drumwell blinked and looked around again. Harry hid a smile behind the cup he'd picked up. He had cold tea from the other day, and he heated that up rather than preparing new tea for his "guest." Drumwell was going to have a hard time dealing with him, he thought. She might as well get used to that from the beginning.

"You didn't read the interview?" Drumwell asked, finally.

"How could I? I have no intention of keeping up with every bit of coverage about myself." Harry gave her the cup and sat down, this time, with his hands folded in front of him. He was trying to look like a passionate but deferential administrator. He had no idea how well he'd succeeded, honestly. His only model for this sort of thing was McGonagall, in some of the interviews she'd given after the war when Hogwarts reopened. "It would be a full-time job. I have better things to do with my time."

Drumwell studied him. Harry studied her back. Drumwell seemed more intelligent than the majority of reporters he'd dealt with, or at least more capable of considering other perspectives. Maybe she would see that Harry wasn't panting to have his name on the front page.

"Well," said Drumwell at last, with false brightness, "I do have the interview right here, so you can read it for yourself." She pulled out a copy of the _Chimera's Herald, _which had a big, bright chimera dancing on the top and coiling all the letters along the length of its serpent tail, and handed it across the desk.

Harry sighed and picked up the paper. There was nothing he wanted to do less, at the moment, than spend time with Ginny's words and get reminded of how she saw him. On the other hand, he had to know what she'd said so he could know how strongly he'd have to hold Draco back later.

_Or maybe you won't hold him back at all._

Harry ignored that impulse. He was still going to try to prevent Draco from taking horrible revenge on Ginny and her child and Michael Corner. Of course he was. He had moved on, he had a new life. She should be able to have one, too.

If Draco pranked her or something, that was one thing, but Harry doubted that he would only go that far.

The interview started with Drumwell gushing about how pretty Ginny was and how nice her house looked and how softly her pregnant stomach swelled, and the baby was due in a few months. Harry managed to ignore that last detail, and he certainly wasn't going to lament over it, when he had Scorpius and the other children he had ignored so deeply in his desire for a blood child.

Ginny responded to Drumwell's question about whether she regretted her divorce with what Drumwell called a "bitter laugh."

"_Of course I don't," said Mrs. Corner, and rearranged her teacup so she could hold it less awkwardly, over the curve of her belly. "Harry couldn't give me children. I would have hesitated to say that before, but since he made the announcement himself, I don't have any reason to hold back." She wiped a tear off and looked into the distance for a moment._

Harry shook his head. He wondered how much of this was Ginny posing for the papers and how much was Drumwell's interpretation, the way that Skeeter used to write things like Harry "pausing tragically" when he was only trying to get his bloody thoughts in order.

_"Do you feel he betrayed you?" I asked her gently._

"_He betrayed one of my secrets," said Mrs. Corner, and her eyes were wide and tear-stained. "I had a right to privacy. We never told anyone why the marriage had ended. I thought he would keep silent for the rest of his life. Why not? I was always planning to. I didn't blame him for getting struck by that Dark hex, even though it was him putting his Auror job above the safety and trust that are so important to a marriage._"

Harry held back his desire to rip the paper in two, knowing that Drumwell was watching for such a reaction. He only sighed and shook his head as though greatly saddened by this, while his stomach churned.

Ginny had never thought that while they were married, any more than he had seriously feared that she would take a sharp dive into the ground while chasing the Snitch. Yes, their jobs had a certain element of danger, but they'd always managed to thrive on that. Harry had never thought she would resort to tactics this low to convince others that—

_What does she want? She wouldn't want to take me back and marry me now that she has Michael._

Harry shook his head again and went on reading.

"_But it wasn't his fault, surely?" I had to ask that, because Mr. Potter, though appropriately candid in the speeches he gave the other day, had never insinuated that he had been deliberately struck by the hex._

"_No, it was an accidental combination they couldn't trace back." Mrs. Corner's hand was white on her teacup. "But it still cost us our future. It turned out that our marriage wasn't strong enough to survive a strain like that. I proposed several solutions for our lack of children, and Harry proposed several to me, but neither of us liked the other's solutions. So in the end, it was simpler to get divorced and for me to seek out someone who could give me what I wanted."_

_Mrs. Corner lifted her head and looked at me so directly that I could see the strength and sincerity of her words. "But otherwise I would never have left him. Never._"

Harry wrung his hand along the edge of the paper, the edge that was carefully out of Drumwell's sight. _Of course. The strength and sincerity of her words._

There wasn't much more. Drumwell had asked Ginny a few questions about her baby and the timing of her pregnancy, seemingly probing for as much of a scandal as she could, but Ginny knew something about the way that papers twisted words, after years of living with Harry. She gave her nothing except the bland facts that might make a human interest story a little more intriguing.

Harry sat back and studied the paper for a moment. All of this was probably as deliberate, as played, as controlled, as Ginny could make it. Which only made it all the more disquieting that she had decided to speak up in the first place, of course.

_What was the reasoning behind that choice? Was it just a message to me? Some way to defend herself before other people could start asking her questions? Or did she really feel that vulnerable?_

"Your response, Mr. Potter?"

Harry looked up. Drumwell was trembling like a Crup who needed to be housebroken, her quill no longer fluffing through her fingers but poised over a piece of parchment. Harry snorted. He knew that eagerness, but for him, it was associated with a case and a chance to save people, not print incriminating truths about their lives.

"That I hope she's happy, of course," he said, carefully folding the paper and putting it aside. "I'm sorry she feels the way she does, but the truth is out there now and I can't take it back. And I hope that the rest of her pregnancy goes well, and her new marriage is everything she wants it to be."

Drumwell had started to write, but had slowed down somewhere near the middle of what Harry said. When he finished, she gave him a definitely disapproving look. "And it's nothing more than _that_? No words in response to her claim of betrayal?"

"I'm sorry she feels the way she does, but the truth is out there now, and I can't—"

"Nothing _more _than that?" Drumwell leaned forwards and drummed one of her legs against the side of the chair. "I can't—she went to the papers and told them something about your marriage, and you don't want to rebut it?"

"If you think of it that way," Harry said, and held Drumwell's eyes while he smiled, "I went to the papers and revealed something about our marriage first. Can you blame her for wanting a little of her own back?"

Drumwell spluttered at him. Harry leaned back and folded his hands behind his head, shaking it and sighing a little.

"Sometimes," he said, "marriages end for reasons like this, that aren't anyone's fault. It's useless to assign blame. We simply have to keep going, and try to find new reasons to live in our new partners. I'm very happy with Draco Malfoy. I think Ginny is happy with her new husband, too, and especially with the new life that's about to share theirs. I wish her well," he concluded, with enough sincerity that Drumwell bounced out of her seat and waved a hand at him.

"You could—you could _say _something," she said, and she was almost spitting. "You could make it clear that she's not ever to speak like that again. That she's irritating and presumptuous and taking advantage of your announcement. You could _say something_."

"Are those all things you feel?" Harry stared at her and touched a hand to his chest. "I must say, Miss Drumwell, you have a lot of feelings about a complete stranger's marriage. Maybe you should have interviewed me immediately after it ended. You would have found me angry then. Now…" He shrugged and spread his arms.

Drumwell stood there and glared at him. Then she tried desolate eyes and a sigh and a dropping of her head.

"You don't know how hard it can be to get ahead in this world of reporters," she whispered. "There's a few stars, like Rita Skeeter, who have all the attention and glory. And with the others, it's all dependent on _chance_. You have to find the spectacular stories, and _keep _finding them. No one remembers you in a month if you've only found one good one."

Harry widened his eyes. "Wow. I never thought of it that way."

Drumwell began to perk up and smile at him, but Harry put his hand over his heart again and nodded at her. "It's yet _another _thing that my private life can be transformed into to please the masses! Or one person, in this case. Or the masses through one person." He fell back in his chair and waved his hand languidly. "I'm losing track of all the transformations, honestly."

Drumwell narrowed her eyes and stood there long enough that Harry thought he might have to escort her out of the office. Then she did turn and stomp towards the door, calling over her shoulder, "Remember it, Mr. Potter. I did give you the chance to retaliate. You might have eased your troubles by going along with me."

"Miss Drumwell."

She acted for a second as if she would keep walking, but Harry flicked his wand, and she had little choice but to stop when the door shut in her face. She turned around with folded arms and lifted chin that didn't hide her fear. A lot of people were afraid of Harry when they got into close quarters with him.

One of the things Harry was grateful for was Ginny's lack of fear, and since her, Draco's.

"If you act against me," Harry said, and held her eyes, "then I'll consider that different from just informing me of something you'd already printed and trying to advance your career. Trying to stand out among the other reporters, I can grasp. But threats are over the line."

He thought about telling her that _he _probably wasn't the one who would explain things to her, but let it go. Draco needed to be stopped if he went too far, and he also needed the advantage of surprise if he did come up with a harmless revenge to use. Either way, Harry didn't want to use him as a club.

"You have a responsibility to the truth," Drumwell whispered, although she still looked back and forth between him and the locked door before she spoke. "You told some of it. Now you need to tell the rest."

"What makes you think that forgiving my ex-wife isn't the truth I want to speak?" Harry gave her a patient smile. "Do you think I _must _want to hate and destroy her because she did something a little silly?"

Drumwell said nothing, but stood there with her quill in her hand. Harry finally shrugged and unlocked the door. "Consider it, Miss Drumwell. I don't have the Aurors to embarrass anymore. You can spin a story out of this if you think of it the right way. That's really what separates reporters, in the end: how they use what they have, not the stories they find. Skeeter could make a story out of this without trying."

"Not a good one," said Drumwell bitterly. "Not a true one. That's what I was trying to give you a chance at, to have the truth printed."

Harry's eyebrows went up, and he decided he must have misjudged her a little. But then he remembered the threat, and snorted.

_Only a little. _

"A word of advice," he said, "You can't print the truth if you tell people to their faces that you don't believe them when they tell you what _is _the truth."

Drumwell glared at him once and then walked out the door. Harry leaned back in his chair, thought about it, and then stood up and gathered his cloak again. He wanted to make sure Draco didn't do anything drastic before he got home.

* * *

Draco looked up, smiling, when Harry stepped through the door into the dining room. Harry paused and eyed Draco for a second, and an answering smile worked its way across his face. Draco could see the moment when he decided to lie.

"How was your day?" Harry asked, coming across to kiss him on the forehead. "I only had one client today, but at least it was someone who just wanted advice, and I could give that without ever leaving the office. She brought her nephew with her. Cute kid."

Draco gave him a bigger, wider smile, and turned the paper around. Harry paused in sitting down on the couch when he saw the interview with Ex-Weasley that was on the front page. Draco went on smiling as he leaned back against the cushion, and watched Harry flick through the pages, muttering and shaking his head.

Then Harry lowered the paper, met his gaze head-on, and said, "She didn't reveal anything horrible about me. And it's in a minor paper, anyway. We didn't even _know _about it. I didn't know about it until the reporter came to my office today and tried to coax more 'truth' out of me. Ginny didn't go too far."

"She _went_," Draco said softly. "You remember how we clarified that I wasn't talking about physical attacks when I said that I would hurt her if she went after you again? I said that if she went to the press and made some stupid announcement, then she was mine. And you agreed." He leaned forwards and held his hand out, catching Harry's wrist and squeezing hard enough to hurt. "Are you going to break your word and fight me on that now?"

Harry gave a rapid, nervous toss of his head, his nostrils flaring. At least he looked a little less shocked, Draco thought. Ready to fight this battle instead of simply letting it steam past him. "You said that you would do it if she announced I was unfaithful to her or something like that. She didn't. She was just trying to get some sympathy."

"And that means, of course, that you have no right to any," said Draco, and let his fingers play along Harry's wrist in a way that he knew very well Harry would find harder to resist than a concentrated stroke. Draco beamed into his eyes and murmured, "She had to know the consequences. Did she think she would get _away _with it?"

Well, of course she had. Draco knew the answer to that question as soon as he asked it. She had thought she would get away with it because Harry wasn't the sort to react instead of curling up and letting the world trample on him.

Draco had never been that type, and he didn't intend to start saying he was now.

"Draco…" Harry closed his eyes. "When we made that bargain, I never thought she would say something," he admitted. "I never thought it would be so hard to keep this bargain. But keep in mind that she has a husband and a child."

Draco cocked his head and clucked his tongue again. "Quillona has a dependent granddaughter. A child old enough to feel embarrassed by her grandmother's actions, whereas Ginny's never has to know about it if she doesn't tell it." But Harry's words were itching at the back of his mind, and the next second he sat up and chuckled.

"What?" Harry watched him with wary eyes.

Draco touched his face and kissed him once, then Summoned a piece of parchment and a quill. There was already ink on the table next to the couch, where Scorpius had been practicing his letters earlier. "You've given me an idea. We keep talking about her child, who isn't even here yet, but her husband very much is, and everyone has been forgetting about him. We'll just write to him and inquire what he thinks about this, shall we?"

"We," Harry said, and reached out to take the shaft of Draco's quill as he dipped it into the ink, "will do nothing of the sort."

Draco looked him peacefully in the eye and said, "I knew you cared more about her than me."

Harry bucked, once, for all the world as though someone had aimed an invisible foot up from the couch cushions and kicked him in the arse. "What?" he whispered, lips pale as he stared at Draco.

"It's all right," Draco said in a voice of what Harry would probably think was ridiculous melancholy any other time, leaning back on the couch and sighing. "I know that she came first and she's female and you already knew you liked her. You were planning a future with her. Whereas I just sort of burst into your life and you'd never been attracted to a man before and this family we have with you and me and Scorpius now was almost an accident. It's all right if you want to go and kneel at her feet again—"

Harry shook him and moved down in front of him with a scowl that said more shaking might be on the menu. "You _berk_," he whispered. "You know I would never think of you like that."

Draco ducked his head and looked up through his long lashes. "What was I supposed to think? Of course you would still care for her."

Harry stared at him. Draco held up the quill and twirled it around again. "And of course you would stop me when I want to get revenge for you," he added lightly. "Because you care more about preserving her peace of mind than mine."

It took a long moment for Harry to acknowledge that he'd heard, but at last he sat back with a harsh exhale and released Draco's wrist. "Right," he whispered, looking off to the side. "I didn't—I never meant to indicate you would be—you're right."

"Am I?" Draco was perhaps being greedy, but he wanted to hear more than Harry's begrudging acceptance of his revenge, wanted to hear Harry admit that at least part of what he'd wanted from Draco had been wrong.

"She did do something," said Harry, staring out the window for a long moment before he turned back. There was a painful expression of determination on his face. "I promised, and even if I did it mostly because I thought she would never go to the papers, she did something. What you want to do isn't terrible and won't ruin her life." He squinted at Draco. "Right?"

Draco snorted. "As much as I think this needs an answer, I wouldn't do it in a way that would cost me you. You're more important to me than revenge."

Harry's face lit with an almost painful glow. Draco stared back at him, and blinked a little. _Remember that, _he told himself. _Harry still needs reassurance, and it would be a terrible thing to forget that._

"Yes," said Harry, and reached out and stroked Draco's wrist. "Then you could at least write to Michael and ask him what he thinks about all this."

"He _is _strangely absent, isn't he?" Draco agreed, and began to write. "From the conference she came to and from this article she published."

He wrote away happily, conscious of Harry's eyes on him at all times. Scorpius was still taking a nap, worn out by Quidditch practice in the garden earlier, and the fire flickered, and it was peaceful.

And Draco handed the letter to Harry for approval when he was done, and Harry read it with various shadows of amusement dancing over his face, and they watched the owl fly out the window together before they went to wake Scorpius and have dinner.

Together.


	44. Long Live Joy

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Forty-Four—Long Live Joy_

"I think," said Scorpius, with so much solemnity that Harry turned towards him at once, thinking this would be something different from anything they had discussed so far, "that I'd like you to stay here for always."

Harry cocked his head. Scorpius was on the floor with several toys around him, some his own, but some that Teddy had brought over from Andromeda's house. The toys were mostly animals, mostly moved on their own, and roared or bleated or whinnied or barked depending on what they were. Harry had thought Teddy was too old to enjoy things like that, but his toys did act differently around Scorpius's, so maybe that was new enough for him.

"I can't," said Teddy absently, reaching out to turn one of his lions towards one of Scorpius's. The lion promptly dropped into a crouch and started inching towards Scorpius's lion, his paws scraping softly at the floor. Teddy grinned. "I have to go back and stay with Grandmother, too."

"No," said Scorpius, with the same solemn tone, and turned towards where Harry was sitting on the couch. "I meant Uncle Harry."

There was a pause, and Teddy's hair changed from blond, the color it usually was when he visited the Malfoys, to a flat black. He glanced at Harry, then away, and his voice was elaborately casual as he replied, "But Uncle Harry has to come and visit me sometimes. He can't stay here for always."

"You could come over and see him here," said Scorpius. Then he talked directly to Harry, the first time he'd really done that today. "And you wouldn't have to go to work anymore. My daddy has enough money for all of us."

Teddy stood up and put his hands on his hips. "Uncle Harry _can't _stay here for always. I just told you that. You need to stop being a baby and trying to keep him all for yourself!"

For the first time, Harry saw Scorpius's Malfoy training really stand him in good stead. He ignored Teddy with the patience of someone ignoring a fly buzzing in his ear, and kept his gaze on Harry, and nodded a little. "You'll do it?" he asked. "You'll come here and live with us. I mean, you're always here in the morning. You _should_."

Harry had to smile a little at Scorpius trying to adopt something he'd probably heard his father or grandfather stay. The minute he smiled, though, Teddy turned around and kicked the toys, scattering them all over the floor.

"Stop it," said Harry, with a quiet authority that made Teddy turn and gape at him. "I wouldn't always stay here and never visit you, Teddy, even if I _did _decide to live with your cousins." He turned and looked at Scorpius. "And there's something more important than just living here that I need to discuss with you. I think we should have your father with us when we talk about it, though."

"What is it?" Teddy demanded.

Harry looked at him thoughtfully. He didn't think Draco would mind having Teddy there when he spoke about being a second father to Scorpius, but Scorpius might, and there was no telling how Teddy would take the conversation. Best to do some damage control first.

"I'm your godfather," he told Teddy, and bent down so he was more on Teddy's level and Teddy could see he was serious. "You knew that was true from the time you were three, right?" That was the first time Teddy had asked Harry what being a godfather really meant, and how it was different from a "real dad."

"Yeah," said Teddy. "_Younger_." He cast a look at Scorpius that told Harry exactly where this jealousy and attempts to claim superiority were coming from.

Harry held back his smile, and Teddy's gaze focused on him again. "Well," said Harry, "nothing is ever going to change that. It's a unique and special relationship. You're always going to be my godson, and no one can ever take that away." He reached out and put his hand gently on Teddy's black hair, rubbing through it.

Teddy grumbled, even as his hair changed texture to match Harry's. "You don't need to talk to me like I'm a baby. I can understand."

"Good," said Harry, and turned towards Scorpius. "So part of the reason I want to stay here is to be with your dad, but part of the reason is also to be with you."

Teddy tensed, but folded his arms and contented himself with only looking away and making a sniffing sound. Scorpius ignored him. He was looking at Harry with wide eyes, one hand reaching out as if he would touch Harry's arm. Harry let him do it, and Scorpius swallowed and stared at him.

"You mean it?" he whispered.

Harry nodded. "Of course I do. But your dad can explain it better than I can. So I think we ought to summon him, don't you?" Purely because he wanted to impress the children—well, and because it was pretty easy at the moment, with happiness beaming in the back of his mind—he drew his wand and called his Patronus.

Scorpius stared at the silver stag. Teddy looked on with a bored expression, but his eyes were wide and glinting. Harry grinned as the stag pranced up and down, showing off the way it tended to do in front of an audience when Harry didn't need it to attack right away, and then turned towards Harry and bowed its antlers.

"Go find Draco," said Harry. "Draco, I think we need to talk about Scorpius having two dads." He watched as the stag sprang through the wall, and smiled down at Scorpius. "So I can stay with you a lot of the time, but I still have to visit Teddy and go to work."

"And visit Rose and Hugo," said Teddy, who didn't look as upset as Harry had thought he might, but whose eyes were still warily traveling back and forth between Scorpius and Harry, as if he thought it possible that Harry might yield and consent to stay a prisoner in Malfoy Manor. "And visit Uncle Ron and Aunt Hermione. And go to the shops."

Harry laughed and leaned out to ruffle Teddy's hair. He wondered where he had got to the point of having children compete over him. Of course, Teddy had never really seemed jealous about Rose and Hugo or the other Weasley children, maybe because Harry didn't see them as often since his divorce. "I know. I have to do lots of things. But I can still live here."

"Of course you can. What do you think you've been doing?"

Harry started and looked up. Draco had arrived, stepping lightly into the drawing room and flicking his fingers to get rid of ink. He'd probably been writing letters, Harry thought, and hoped they hadn't interrupted him at something important.

Then he dismissed the thought. Draco was smiling in that private way he had, where his eyes were doing the majority of it and his mouth was only turning up a little. But that meant he was pleased, and more than willing to be interrupted if they wanted. He held out one hand to Harry and one to Scorpius.

"So," he said quietly. "You're happy to have him live here as your other father, Scorpius?"

"Yes," said Scorpius, and gave Harry a soft look. "But I think he'll still be Uncle Harry."

"Yes," said Harry in return, and reached out to scoop Scorpius up and draw Teddy in for a hug at the same time. It made him happy and warm to be holding them both like that, to know that he could have them both in his life, and that he wasn't going to be abandoned without a child after all.

It had been foolish to fear that either his divorce or losing Ethan was going to be the end of his life, after all. But he honestly hadn't known that at the time.

"And you'll be here with me."

Harry started and looked up. Draco was holding out a hand to him, and Harry took it and gently put the children down, letting Draco draw him off the couch. Draco kissed him and turned him around in his arms so that Harry was facing the kids again, running one hand lightly up and down Harry's back.

"Are you going to get _married_?" Teddy asked. His hair was flickering from color to color, orange and green and red and black and pink and blond and every shade in between. He reminded Harry so strongly of Tonks that he had to swallow. But he also knew that Teddy only changed his hair like that when he was feeling uncertain about something.

"Probably not yet," was all Draco said, casually, but his arms tightened around Harry's waist. Harry knew Teddy wasn't the only person in the room who was feeling uncertain. They were both coming out of marriages that had ended—well, maybe Draco's hadn't ended badly, but Harry didn't think it had given him a huge longing to jump right into another marriage, either. He leaned back safely in Draco's arms and smiled up into his eyes, shaking his head slightly. Draco relaxed.

"That would be strange if you did," said Teddy. "I mean, it would be strange for someone to have two dads."

"No, it would be _great_," Scorpius said, so strongly that Harry didn't even have time to worry about whether Teddy's statement would hurt Scorpius's feelings. "Because one of them is my dad, and one is Uncle Harry."

Draco let Harry stand back up straight. Harry nodded to Teddy. "I don't know when we'll get married," he said. _Or if we will, _but that was something he would have to discuss more with Draco to know the answer to. "But I do know that we'll wait a while, and it won't be strange if we do."

Teddy scratched his head and looked skeptical, but luckily, he didn't make a big deal of it. He turned back to the toys instead and said, "My lion can eat your lion, Scorpius."

"No, he can't," said Scorpius, and they went back to their game as if nothing had ever happened. Maybe for Scorpius, it hadn't.

Harry saw the darting little glances Teddy kept giving him, though, and decided that he would speak with him privately later. It made sense that Teddy would be a little rattled by this and maybe jealous of Scorpius, and Harry didn't want him to suffer through it. At the same time, he wasn't going to not move in with Draco and help raise Scorpius because Teddy didn't like it.

He was done giving things up because other people might be scared or confused if he didn't.

"Well done," Draco said into the back of his neck, and kissed him. Harry sighed and turned his head to return the kiss with interest, and they would have gone further if the boys weren't in the room.

Draco's smile was warm with promise of doing exactly that later, and Harry had just started to smile back when he saw an owl flying into the room. He shivered. He ought to know that owl, a distinctive tawny color with bands of silver on its wings. It was the owl he had got Ginny for a wedding present.

Draco turned, saw the bird, and held out his hand commandingly. For a moment, the owl swerved as if it would fly around Draco to Harry, but either Draco was the real target after all or he overwhelmed it, because it ended up on settling on his arm. Draco took the letter away and tucked it calmly into his pocket.

The owl pecked him as if it wanted a reply. Draco lifted his head and stared, and after an uncertain moment, the owl took off, flying into a corner and perching there with a resigned patience.

"I think that we need to wait," said Draco with a soft smile and a tilt of his head towards the kids.

Harry hesitated, then nodded. He certainly didn't want Draco swearing at the letter, which he suspected would happen if Ginny had written it. Not that Michael was helpless, and he might as well be using Ginny's bird as Ginny herself, but, well. Harry didn't have the best feeling about having her owl show up.

"We do," he said, and then got down on the floor and joined in the game of the lions. Scorpius kindly handed him a tiger that pranced around roaring so he wouldn't have to feel left out, and Draco slipped out of the room quietly. The owl took wing and followed him. Harry snorted a little.

But he did relax. That meant whoever it was, Ginny or Michael, had written to Draco and not to him.

Harry was just about ready to step back and let Draco fight some of his battles for him, as long as Draco agreed to do it.

* * *

Draco kept his hands off the letter only with difficulty, during the long afternoon of writing letters for his father and to his own Ministry and business contacts, and during dinner, and Teddy's farewell and trip back to his grandmother's house, and putting Scorpius to bed. Then at last he was sitting in front of the fire with Harry, and he took the letter out and spread it flat on his knee.

Harry leaned over to read it without being asked. Draco nodded and smiled at him, and then they focused on the letter that Draco suspected would be a stream of obscenities or a rant.

It was neither. It was also not by Ex-Weasley. It was from Michael Corner, and it was polite, and it was very cold.

_Malfoy,_

_I can't pretend that I really approve of what my wife is doing. I don't like hearing about her former marriage, for obvious reasons. I wish she could focus on what we have now, and what we're going to have in a few months._

_But it's not like I can tell her to stay home and sit down and shut up. Why should I? She would resent me for that, and rightly. I can encourage her to stop focusing on Potter and give it a rest, but she won't listen to me. I have talked to her about it, a lot, and she wants to speak to the papers and explain how she feels betrayed._

_So yes, I know about this. It doesn't make me happy. I also know that she'll get upset about me asking her to stop, and I have no right to interfere with some of the things she does anyway. No human being has the right to do that to another. If Potter has the right to tell his side of the story, then she has the right to tell hers. I can only hope that it'll stop at the one interview._

Corner's name was signed at the bottom, and that was it. Draco turned over the sheet of parchment just to make sure, but there wasn't any more.

"So," said Harry, and sat back, shaking his head. "I shouldn't be so disappointed that that didn't work, but I am."

"So am I," Draco breathed. He had thought Corner was oblivious, or hiding at least from the actual consequences of his wife's behavior. He could have avoided the newspaper article since it was in a more obscure paper. He could have been unaware of her exact words and the way that she was dwelling on Harry telling the truth as some kind of "betrayal" of her secrets.

But no, he knew, and he had talked to her, and he had decided that he didn't care enough to do anything.

Draco leaned back and watched Harry. Harry had taken the letter in hand and was looking down at it bleakly. Then he looked up and caught Draco's eye and shrugged a little.

"I suppose we were overly optimistic," he said. "I mean, why _should _he be her keeper? There's no reason for it. He isn't responsible for her, and she—I mean, she isn't doing something that would seem outrageous to someone who's married to her. He probably does wish she would stop talking about it, but it isn't on the same level as threats or the shit that used to get published about me in the _Prophet _all the time."

Draco said nothing, but only sat looking. He wanted to see what would happen before he made a move, before he had to do something that might be drastic. He wanted to see if Harry would recognize the need for action.

Harry put the letter down and looked blankly ahead for a moment. Then he turned to Draco and said, "I don't want you to publish anything about her that would harm her in the way that the _Prophet _tried to harm me."

Draco half-smiled. It was interesting that Harry had assumed publication would be Draco's route to revenge. "I wouldn't say she was mad or anything of the sort. It's not true, and it would only make us look more deluded and rebound on us in a bad way." He took Harry's hand. "But I also wasn't thinking of going to the papers with a story."

"What, then?" Harry asked quietly. "You can't blackmail her the way that you did Quillona."

"No. She didn't connive at murder."

Harry narrowed his eyes. "That isn't the same as saying that you can't blackmail her. But she hasn't committed a crime."

"Not in the normal sense," Draco agreed calmly. "I was thinking about the social sense. I know something that would make her feel threatened if it was released."

"What?"

Draco held his eyes. "The fact that she wanted to sleep with someone else while married to you, and have you accept and raise the resulting child."

Harry tensed. "That embarrasses me as much as it does her, you know," he said quietly.

"Why?" Draco shook his head. "For one thing, you've already talked about things that I don't think are less embarrassing. You decided to reveal them. And if she wants to keep it quiet, the problem is solved, anyway."

Harry stared at his hands. "We were both unreasonable. If she had wanted to consider Muggle methods, or if I had decided that I could accept her having someone else's child, or if we had both agreed to adopt…"

Draco lunged at him, and Harry actually flung up his hands, but since Draco had only wanted to take hold of one of them and drag it down to hold across his lap anyway, that wasn't a problem. Harry eyed him sideways.

"You were both unreasonable," Draco said. "Fine. But she's presenting you as the only one at fault. I don't like that." He said it, he thought, in a sweet, calm voice, but from the way Harry's eyes widened, he might have heard something else in his tone. "I _really _don't like it," Draco added, for emphasis, and let his teeth show. "You can feel sorry for her and not just roll over and let her do whatever she wants. Unlike her husband," Draco finished, with a glance at the letter. He would have set it on fire, but they might want it later as evidence.

Harry shut his eyes. "He can't just imprison her or cast a Silencing spell on her or something. He doesn't have the right to do that."

"It seems to me," said Draco delicately, "that Corner and her family are all putting her rights ahead of everyone else's. You could use someone who acts on your side for once. Or are you going to forbid me to do that?"

Harry shook his head. "I thought contacting Michael was a good idea, but it didn't work," he muttered. "I promised."

Draco gently lifted his chin. "I don't want you to be miserable about it," he said. "Can you learn to like it? What is making you so angry about this?"

Harry glanced off to the side, but he didn't try to move away, and Draco simply waited, knowing he would look back at him eventually.

Harry didn't do that, but he did start muttering what Draco though was the real answer in a flat voice. "I'm frightened of going too far and doing something unforgivable. We were _both _unreasonable. I don't want to—to do something worse than that. I don't want to act all self-righteous and like I have the right to scold her, either."

"You can say that you don't have the right," Draco said, shrugging his shoulders. "But someone should, and I'm assuming the right since you don't want it."

Harry glanced at him then. "And you won't let me come with you when you go to see her."

Draco looked him directly in the eyes. "Do you think you could let me say what needs to be said? Or would you interrupt and splutter and jump up and down and try to convince me that she isn't really that bad?"

Harry shut his eyes tightly. Then he sighed and leaned forwards to put his arms around Draco. Draco permitted it, though he was still interested in knowing an answer to his question.

"I want someone to fight for me," Harry whispered. "I want—I'm afraid of you going too far, too. I'm afraid of how good it feels to know that you will, when Ron has to be restrained because she's his sister and Michael can't because she's his wife and Hermione doesn't want to stir up trouble and the rest of the family is uncomfortable doing anything. But I want this to _stop_."

Draco nodded tenderly. It was only Harry's conscience restraining him, as usual. He had thought as much.

"Then I'll go and talk to her tomorrow," he said, and kissed Harry's forehead. "I'm sure she'll see me. In the meantime…" He slid a hand gently beneath Harry's shirt.

Harry looked up and laughed, and the letter was forgotten.

But Draco kept it in the back of his mind when he woke later that night. He Summoned it and studied it again, the words of a reasonable man who seemed so afraid of being unreasonable that he wouldn't even ask his wife to stop going to the papers, which Draco thought was a perfectly obvious step.

Draco would be the one to ask. And he wouldn't have any particular mercy because Ex-Weasley was pregnant, which seemed to be everyone else's motivation.

_If you think about it, _he thought, as he drifted off to sleep, _you could say that I'm the one who's treating her the best, because everyone else is acting like she's a child because of her pregnancy, and I'm the one who thinks she should act like a rational adult._

That realization carried him cheerfully through the night.


	45. Walking the Right Path

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Forty-Five—Walking the Right Path_

Draco prepared carefully for his little visit to Ex-Weasley. He made sure that he had an impeccable cloak of soft grey, the sort he would usually only wear to the Ministry, at an official appointment. Then he checked his pockets and made sure that he had not only his wand but a Portkey, in case she turned violent.

Harry, who was getting ready to leave himself for the office, paused and watched Draco preparing. His eyebrows rose at the sight of the Portkey. "You know she isn't in the habit of casting the Bat-Bogey Hex anymore?"

"Maybe not at you," said Draco, and leaned forwards to kiss him quickly. Scorpius was at Andromeda's house, returning Teddy's visit, and Draco had no compunction about leaving him there for as long as this needed to take. "But I thought I ought to compensate for her dislike of Slytherins as well as the person you've moved on with."

Harry opened his mouth, probably to comment on his ex-wife not being all that bad. Draco held his eyes. Harry closed his mouth.

"Yes," said Draco. "Just leave me to handle this. You won't ever have to worry about her again after today."

Harry rolled his eyes. "And that doesn't worry me at all."

"I wouldn't kill her, don't worry," said Draco. "It would be too merciful and earn too much sympathy for her from the public, after everything she's done."

Harry snorted. "I wish I could believe that that wasn't really one of your motivations," he said, but he didn't fall to his knees and beg Draco to reconsider. He just nodded to him and went out the door.

Draco was glad. If Harry was going to fall to his knees, he had much better reasons for being down there.

That image fastened in his head, he strode out, off the Manor's grounds, and clearly pictured the house that the article in the _Chimera's Herald_ had described with such accuracy. Then he flicked his wand once, and Apparated there. He blinked a little when he found himself outside a stone wall that the article hadn't mentioned, and then smiled.

_Well. They do have some notion of elementary defense, after all. Or maybe Corner added the wards after he started thinking what exactly his wife's words sounded like._

Draco strolled towards the wall, making his pace utterly casual. Despite his lack of invitation, he doubted that Ex-Weasley would send him away. She would be too concerned with "beating" him. Draco thought that was what this was all about: the concern with defeating Harry somehow by rubbing her happy life in his face.

Draco was about to destroy that confidence. And he would take such pleasure in it that only making love to Harry could compare.

_No. Making love to Harry will always be better._

Draco smiled at his own thoughts, and walked through the low gate without slowing down. He saw a single flash of a charm, one that he knew would take his image like a camera and show it to the people inside the house. But at the moment, no alarms were sounding, and they hadn't armed any traps against him.

He would take that as his being welcome, then. Or at least as welcome as Ex-Weasley, with her appalling lack of manners, was likely to make him.

He was halfway up the pathetic little path—he wondered for a moment if Ex-Weasley had ever seen the Manor, and was trying to come up with an imitation of it—when the door of the house opened. A man Draco had to assume was Michael Corner, because he hadn't seen him since Hogwarts and hadn't paid much attention to him even then, came out and stood in front of the door. He had his arms folded.

_Oh, no, folded arms, _Draco thought, and hid his smirk as he walked nearer and nearer.

He was perhaps five paces away when Corner said, "That's far enough."

Draco stopped tamely, and eyed him. He had to admit that he hadn't anticipated Corner being here, but on the other hand, he didn't really see why it had to affect him. Corner was irrelevant to his plans. He wasn't the one harassing Harry, and while he was as pathetic as their little path, he hadn't caused any direct harm to either Draco or Harry.

"Ginny doesn't want to see you."

"That's too bad," said Draco quietly. "I want to see her. She's causing harm to my lover with her words, and you won't interfere and stop her. Neither will her family. Everyone is treating her like spun glass. Why? Do none of you see what she's doing as wrong? Do you secretly agree with her?"

"No!" Corner flushed bright red. He was dark-haired, so it didn't clash the way it would with a Weasley's hair, but it was still not a good look on him. "I wish she would stop harassing him. I do. Harry—he did some things I can't agree with, but in the main, he's a good man."

"Then why don't you stop her?" Draco was enjoying this conversation, unplanned diversion or not. It was fascinating to look into the mind of someone who would just step back and stare at the sky while someone did something wrong in front of them, moral beliefs or not.

"Because what else can I do?" Corner spread his hands. "I spoke to her. She wouldn't agree to stop. What else can I do?'

"Tell her that what she's doing is disgraceful," said Draco at once, his mind going to what he would have said if Harry started doing this. "Tell her she's an idiot. Tell her that you'd prefer to spend time with her and your child, and forget about the past."

Corner flushed even deeper. Draco supposed that someone who gave a shit could have told the difference on his face between an angry flush and an embarrassed one, but Draco didn't give a shit. "I'm not going to call my own wife an idiot."

"What about the others?" Draco countered. "I merely suggested insults as a means of telling the truth, you understand. There are other ways."

Corner looked away from him. "You don't understand the way Ginny is when she's got her mind set on something," he muttered.

"And because of that, no one else can withstand her? Not her brothers? Not her mother? I understand her mother is rather formidable."

Draco made his voice gentle and mocking, so that Corner stiffened and looked at him suspiciously, but Draco just kept blandly smiling. Corner wouldn't be able to _prove _mocking intent, and that was the important thing.

Of course, Corner didn't seem able to prove much of anything, or impose his will, either. But that wasn't Draco's concern. Getting in to see Corner's wife and getting him out of the way was.

_Or perhaps he can watch me and learn. _Draco had to admit that the expression on Corner's face after he heard about his wife's little plan for infidelity might be refreshing, like a draught of cool water for Draco after dealing with so many of both Harry's and Ex-Weasley's little quirks.

"It's a delicate situation right now," Corner said stiffly.

Draco snapped his fingers. "Of course! I'd forgotten that pregnancy turns a woman's brains to mush and you have to support her upright and say, 'Yes, dear,' until she has the child, to prevent them from pouring out of her ears! Trust you to remind me of how true that is." He gave Corner a blinding smile.

Corner's fingers clenched at the sides of his body, and he made a sharp, wrenching move with his head. "I don't believe that."

"Then what do you mean? Why is the situation so delicate that you can't possibly tell your wife she's embarrassing all of you and she should just let Harry move on with his life, the way she has?" Draco leaned a shoulder comfortably against the wall of the house.

Corner shook his head. "You wouldn't understand. You're not married."

"I _was _married," said Draco, a little amazed. He didn't think Corner was stupid—other than having that special kind of stupidity that anyone needed who was going to marry into the Weasley family—but he kept handing Draco all these arguments that Draco could break down without effort. "I'm divorced now. And do you know why?"

Corner stared at him as if Draco was the least interesting flobberworm he'd ever seen, and didn't reply.

"Because it didn't work out between us," Draco told him. "Because my wife wanted to work on magical projects, and I wanted to raise our son to be a Malfoy, and we couldn't simply maneuver around each other. We were in each other's way. So we got divorced. We talked things out like normal people." He paused. "Are you afraid that you'll end up divorced from her if you oppose her?"

Corner's face flashed with some emotion that he probably wouldn't name fear, but Draco would, before he looked away. "It doesn't matter what you think, Malfoy," he muttered, in a tone that didn't sound like the defiance he wanted it to be, either. "Because you can't hold her back, and you don't have the right to try."

"I know what I want her to do," said Draco. "I didn't come prepared to offer her violence. Just to talk. That ought to be enough."

"Keeping me away from him isn't something you ought to do either, Michael."

Corner turned, blanching, one hand reaching out as if he wanted to touch Ex-Weasley and stop her from coming to the door. But she stepped past him—the way she seemed to be doing on lots of issues, Draco thought snidely—and came to a halt in the doorway, staring at Draco with her arms folded over the top of her stomach.

_How many times can she remind someone looking at her that she's pregnant?_ Draco even understood the impulse, in a way. It was a way to tell people that she was where Harry had wanted to be, the parent of a child on the way. A child who was of her own blood and not someone else's.

But it was still flaunting, not simply a woman telling her story and hoping to be believed. Not that she ought to have a stake in what Harry did with his body three years afterwards, anyway, but Draco knew her claim to be concerned with her new life exclusively was so much bollocks.

He wouldn't tell her that now, not when he might give up his chance to talk to her. "Weasley," he said, nodding to her. "Or Corner, or whatever name you're calling yourself. Should we talk?"

"I don't like the tone you're taking with my wife, Malfoy," said Corner, making a vague threatening motion with one hand.

Draco stared at him in utter boredom. If _he _was threatening someone, he thought, they would have _known _it. None of this vague business. He shrugged a little and turned back to Ex-Weasley. "Can we talk?"

"I told you to stay out of this, Michael." Ex-Weasley's eyes were glittering as she gestured Draco into the house. Draco caught a single glimpse of a large, open room with niches all along the wall that displayed vases and urns and small statues, before Ex-Weasley moved in front of him and pointed towards a spiral staircase. "We're going upstairs where no one will disturb us. And it's Corner, by the way."

Draco let one side of his mouth turn up in an utterly meaningless smile, and went the way she had pointed out. Behind him was a short, fierce argument he didn't give a shit about, so he didn't listen to it. The important thing was that he heard Ex-Weasley's footsteps coming after him.

She said nothing until they were upstairs, and in an anteroom that must lead to their bedchambers, because Draco could see the edge of a bed beyond one open door. He snorted a little to himself. So although Corner didn't have the money to own and operate a huge house like Malfoy Manor, he followed the pattern of waiting rooms before the main rooms where the life of the house went on—as pointless as that was when he probably never had business visitors or guests that had to be entertained.

"You never struck me as someone who would stand up for Harry Potter," Ex-Weasley told him as she sat down, and drew Draco's eyes away from the bed he could barely see. He didn't want to think about Corner sleeping in it with the woman in front of him anyway.

"Well, that's strange," Draco murmured. "You never struck me as someone who would divorce Harry Potter."

Ex-Weasley's confidence disappeared. She had worn it like a smug mask before, and Draco had wondered whether it was real or not. Now he thought it was, but easily torn. She leaned forwards and narrowed her eyes. "That happened long before _you_ entered the picture, so I'm not sure why you would bother having opinions on it."

"Three years," Draco said in a musing voice. "That's a long time, isn't it?"

"It is," Ex-Weasley agreed, tone aggressive. "And if you would pay attention to me instead of Harry, you would take the good advice to stop interfering in what doesn't concern you."

"Why should Harry's family life concern you?" Draco asked. "Who he sleeps with, who he adopts children with? He didn't make that announcement with any sort of reference to you. You're the one who suddenly popped up and declared that he couldn't go on with his life because you had some sort of bizarre persecution complex."

"_Persecution complex_," Ex-Weasley whispered. "You don't think that the secrets of the marriage I shared with Harry are worth defending?"

"No."

Ex-Weasley had probably been prepared to launch into a tirade, Draco thought, but he'd effectively stopped her. She was staring at him with her mouth open. Then she gave her head a little shake, and leaned in with a haughty sniff.

"You were never there," she whispered. "You don't know how it was. You don't know how devastated I was, when I thought I would never have a family with Harry. He was the first man I loved. I would gladly have had his children." Again her hands rested protectively on her belly. "But it wasn't to be."

"If you're resigned to it, then you ought to accept him moving on with someone else."

"Not when he broadcasts gossip about the end of our marriage all over!" Ex-Weasley folded her arms. "Our families were the only ones who knew why our marriage ended. It should have _stayed _that way. Not being able to have children is a very private thing."

"You mean _your _family," Draco corrected, with soft maliciousness. "Harry didn't have any family apart from yours until recently."

"He had Andromeda, and Teddy," Ex-Weasley answered so quickly that Draco cursed himself for forgetting about them. Honestly, though, he thought of Andromeda and Teddy as part of the extended family that Harry had now, since they were related by blood to Draco. "And he would have had other people if you hadn't shown up."

Draco cocked his head. He hadn't come here to talk to her about Harry, not really, but he was curious what she would say if he let her run on. "What do you mean?"

"He would have dated someone else," Ex-Weasley said. "Some woman. He would have settled down and made a life with her. Maybe she would have had children, and he would have got to have children that way."

Draco chuckled. "It bothers you that he chose a man instead, doesn't it?"

"It means—" Ex-Weasley cut off what she would have said, and turned her head haughtily to the side. "It doesn't matter what I think," she said in a sniffy little voice. "It only matters that he chose to betray me, and probably just to get on your good side. You urged him to tell the truth about his state, didn't you?"

"I'm glad to think you can recognize it as the truth, and not just something he came up with to torment you."

Ex-Weasley turned on him, her eyes flashing passionately. "You have absolutely _no idea _what I've gone through, or what I continue to go through," she whispered. "No idea."

Draco decided he didn't want to waste more time discussing her drama. It was time to move on to the purpose of his visit. "Apparently your husband isn't willing to tell you to stop talking about Harry, and your family are throwing their hands up the same way. I thought I should tell you that you'll stop now."

"If you go to open threats," said Ex-Weasley, and dropped her hands to cradle her belly again, "I don't think either Michael or Harry will be very pleased."

"Probably not," Draco agreed. "Good thing that it's not open threats." He paused long enough for her to give him a baffled look, and then added, "Do you think your husband would be pleased to learn that you wanted to stay with Harry, but cheat on him and sleep with someone else to get pregnant? Was he going to be the one? No, maybe not," he went on thoughtfully while Ex-Weasley got paler. "Otherwise, I don't think it would have taken three years for you to get pregnant."

"How _dare _you," Ex-Weasley whispered, and then closed her eyes for a second and really looked as if she was fighting illness. "Harry told you that? He's betrayed even more of my secrets than I suspected."

"He's done what he could to move on with his life," Draco corrected her. "And what he can't do, I'm doing for him. Did you ever tell your husband what you were willing to do for a child of your own? That you wanted to stay married to the Great Harry Potter?"

"Yes."

Draco sighed and pursed his lips. "You should be a better liar if you want to fool me," he murmured. "I have more experience with this than you'll ever know."

Ex-Weasley turned towards him, clutching her robes around her like the maiden she wasn't. "Does _Harry _know that you're a liar?" she challenged him. "Does he know he can't trust you?"

"He doesn't trust me with everything," Draco said simply. "For example, he wouldn't let me use some of the wilder ideas for revenge that I had. He doesn't trust me to stop if I put you in physical pain."

Ex-Weasley had nothing to say to that. Draco saw her face go absolutely blank, as if she was unable to even comprehend that someone would threaten her with that.

Draco let it soak in, the image of what he _could _have done, before he went on. "But I do a spot of blackmail for him now and then. Say I believe you, that you told your husband you wanted to sleep with someone else while you were still married to Harry. Have you told the public? Would they have such a favorable image of you if they knew that you were all set to be unfaithful to the Savior of the Wizarding World?" He settled back and let that image sink in as well, hands folded primly before him.

"You couldn't tell them that." Ex-Weasley sounded faint and sick. "It isn't true."

"It's true," said Draco. "You would have been denying it from the beginning if Harry had lied to me about what you wanted to do."

Ex-Weasley found the strength from somewhere to sit up and glare at him. "This is why secrets like this shouldn't be told! Because only the people in a marriage can understand the—the context. It wasn't _like _that! I would have given Harry a family, and he would have raised the child with me, and we would have had—"

"The memories of you fucking someone else," said Draco pleasantly.

Ex-Weasley was apparently gutted by the word. Draco examined her with sadistic delight. He wondered for a second what Harry would feel if he could see Draco now, and dismissed the thought with a sigh. That was why he had to be here alone, why he hadn't brought Harry in the first place. He would go soft the instant it seemed that someone he had cared for was hurt, and that would ruin everything.

"I already told you, only people in a marriage can understand," Ex-Weasley mumbled, but her voice was a thread.

"I think I understand well enough," Draco said. He allowed some of his true anger into his eyes, but he thought perhaps he had already threatened Ex-Weasley too much. She simply stared at the floor, and didn't look up at him. "You wanted a child, of course, but you also wanted your marriage to famous Harry Potter. And the lover on the side, that was a good thing, too. How many children would you have? He would always be there and willing to give you whatever you want, wouldn't he?" He paused and made a show of considering. "Maybe I'm wrong about it not being Corner. He seems pretty bloody willing to oblige you now."

Ex-Weasley shook her head. She was still bleeding and trying not to show it, but Draco's eyes could pick out weakness the way they could deceptions. "You have no idea what I wanted."

"Harry was trying to spare you," Draco said. "To tell me that you were a good person, and both of you acted unreasonable because you were under the pressure of extreme disappointment."

Ex-Weasley lifted her head, eyes flaring for a second with hope.

Draco rather delighted in taking it away. "But I still saw the truth. You sprang it on him the way you did, and kept fighting for it, because you thought he would agree, and you _could _have everything you wanted. You wanted more than him."

"I wanted my dreams to come true," said Ex-Weasley. "And he wanted a child, too. He would have understood—"

"You couldn't agree, and so you divorced," Draco interrupted. _Time to end it. _"He was willing to have children with you in some other way, but you couldn't stand that. You clung to your fantasy of excess, and you only divorced him because you couldn't bring him to agree to it." He paused, eyeing Ex-Weasley's breathing and body language and a hundred subtler signals that his father had taught him to read, and added, "You can protest all you want, but I know the truth. And if you persist in talking about Harry, so will the entire wizarding world."

"Exposing the truth about me will still hurt Harry."

Draco shrugged a little. "I can insulate him from that. It'll hurt you more." He smiled. "And what might it do to your marriage?"

Ex-Weasley closed her eyes for a second. "I told him," she said, but her voice stopped after that.

"It doesn't have to happen," Draco said soothingly. "No one outside this house ever has to know. Your own _husband _doesn't have to know. But you have to stop talking about Harry and refuse requests from reporters if they ask you for a story."

Ex-Weasley's knuckles were white. That was fine. So was her face. Draco waited, longer than he'd thought he have to. He was a little impatient by the time she was finished considering. Why had Harry found her intelligent enough to marry? She didn't seem to know her own best interest.

Then again, he had known _that. _It was why she hadn't stayed married to Harry in the first place.

"You win," Ex-Weasley finally whispered, and then snapped her head up and locked her eyes on him. "If I can get a chance for revenge, I _will_."

Draco smiled. "If I was foolish enough to leave myself open to that, then you might find it harder than you think." He stood up, bowed once, and walked towards the stairs.

"You aren't staying to gloat?" Ex-Weasley sounded bewildered.

"Reality will do my gloating for me," Draco said, and walked down the stairs, unhindered by Corner, who had disappeared somewhere, unhindered, either, by the same weight of grim determination he had walked in with. He had got some revenge for Harry's sake, and the peace and quiet Harry valued more.

If she was foolish enough to persist, although Draco didn't think she would when it could cost her the second man she'd wanted…

Then Draco would take even greater joy in tearing her apart. He had only held back so far because Harry had asked him to.

_Harry is naïve sometimes, but he's mine, _Draco thought, and Disapparated the moment he was beyond the wall. He had a life to get back to.


	46. A Test of Will

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Forty-Six—A Test of Will_

"I don't know if you can help my son," said the heavyset woman who was settling herself in front of Harry. She gave him a challenging stare. "But no one else has helped him yet, either. So I want to see what you can do."

Harry nodded in response, in respect. He could see why this woman wanted to test him before giving him a chance. And at least he thought he would be able to pass the test, because this black-eyed woman had done what no one else had so far: she'd brought a little file with her about her son, including his photograph and an Auror report that made Harry's fingers itch.

The first thing that really caught Harry's eye was the photograph, pinned on the file's first page. The boy was small, maybe eight or nine, with brown hair and black eyes like his mother. "His name is Brandon Melitt?" Harry asked, considering the boy again, and noticing the way that he seemed to flinch away even from the camera as it turned towards him.

"Yes," said the woman, still watching him.

Harry nodded, and read on. He found her name a little further down. "You're Angela Helester, then." He gave her a quick, curious glance, wondering why she and the boy didn't share the last name, and if he might have been adopted from another family, despite how alike they looked.

Helester stretched her mouth in a sharp grin. "I divorced Brandon's father. Originally, that worthless piece of shit said that he would take care of Brandon, so I changed my name back to my birth name. But then I found out he was abusing my son, and I took him back. I thought about changing Brandon's name, too," she added thoughtfully, musing, "but by that point, he'd been through enough changes."

Harry nodded and read on. The file was brief and stark. It said that Aurors had been called to the home where Brandon lived because one of Brandon's primary school teachers, a witch, had noticed the taint of Dark magic on him. Brandon's father had been arrested for practice of the Dark Arts on a minor, and the list of suspected spells…

Harry's gorge rose. "I hope his father is in prison," he whispered.

"He is," said Helester, and her eyes shone. "There was a slight accident the first day he was in Azkaban, in fact."

Harry blinked at her. Helester inclined her head. "You know the Ministry doesn't have Dementors patrol Azkaban on a regular basis anymore. But there was one on the shore the day my worthless ex-husband arrived, you see. It just happened to be hungry, and the Aurors who were escorting him just happened not to be proficient in the Patronus Charm. _So _sad."

Helester slapped her hands together sharply, once. "His body lies in prison now," she said. "And long may his heart beat."

Harry shook his head a little. At least he could hope that a woman this ruthless would fight for her child as fiercely as she would fight others to protect him. "Then you think _I _can undo the effects of the spells his father used on him?" he asked, and looked at the list. "_Suspected _spells?"

"The bastard never spoke the incantations aloud, in case Brandon tried to report on them later." Helester's hands rested in her lap for a second. "They knew the kind of curses, though, if not the specific spells. Pain curses, like milder versions of the Cruciatus. Spells to damage the vocal cords." She met Harry's eyes. "My son doesn't speak, Mr. Potter. I hope he can someday."

"I can try to help him," said Harry. From reading over the file, he already wanted to. He put the file down carefully and pushed it back across the desk to Helester. "But there's something you should know. I'm no Mind-Healer. In fact, I'm under the care of one myself right now." He winced a little as he thought about that. He hadn't made an appointment with Healer Brandeis since he'd told the public the truth about not being able to have children. He should go soon.

"I could hardly miss the news when _that _came out, Mr. Potter," said Helester dryly. "That's one reason I chose you. I thought someone who had been through a lot of shit himself would know more about what Brandon was feeling."

"Have you taken him to Mind-Healers?" Harry countered.

Helester nodded. "A few were able to ease some of his more permanent nightmares." Her jaw tightened. "The bastard had given Brandon images of crimes and _perversions _that he couldn't erase, so he saw them every time he closed his eyes."

Harry found himself glad that Helester's husband was dead, or he would have been tempted to finish the job himself. And he didn't need any _more _scandals cluttering up his reputation.

"But they couldn't do any more," Helester finished. "They said working with young minds is difficult, and they'd brought Brandon as far as they could. They suggested different sorts of healing with light and colors, but none of those has taken." She gave Harry a strange sort of yearning look, as if she saw qualities in him that Harry couldn't see himself. "Will you try, Mr. Potter? Come and meet Brandon? That might at least tell you whether you could help or not."

"Yes," said Harry, standing. There had never been a question, and not only because Helester was the first person who had made an honest appointment with him in days, rather than coming by to gape at him. "I want to go and see what I can do for him."

_Maybe I can't do anything, but I wouldn't forgive myself if I didn't take a look._

* * *

Brandon Melitt was a supernaturally quiet little boy who looked almost exactly like his photograph, complete with flinch when Harry walked into the room. Harry stopped and sat down near the door, wondering as he did so if Helester should have tried someone female. Harry might remind Brandon too much of the man who had abused him.

The room was large and cheerful, painted blue walls with white clouds on them. Harry saw numerous small doors, which were too numerous all to lead to other rooms. He looked at Helester, who had gone ahead of him to prepare Brandon for his visit, in confusion.

"Cupboards," Helester told him. "Some for his clothes and toys, but mainly, he likes to hide in them."

Harry swallowed painfully. He was becoming less certain by the second that he could help Brandon, because of the similarities between them more than anything else. He turned back to Brandon with his heart pounding painfully.

Brandon sat with his head bowed and said nothing. His breathing was low and even, but not slow. He cradled a small crystalline marble in his hand that he turned back and forth.

Harry looked at the marble. Most of the ones he had seen in the wizarding world had a magical design in the center, one that might resemble a chaotic, random pattern or a magical creature like a flying dragon. He thought this was the first completely transparent one he had seen. He squinted, and blinked when he realized that it wasn't actually transparent; he couldn't see Brandon's fingers and hand through it.

"Where did he get that marble?" he asked quietly. "Is that something he plays with all the time?"

"Not all the time, but pretty often." Helester cast him a keen glance. "If you're thinking any of his toys are cursed, don't. I burned all the clothes the bastard gave him and bought him new ones, and I bought him new toys, as well."

"I wasn't really thinking that," Harry mumbled, watching Brandon closely nonetheless. There was something about the crystal marble and the way he held it that got Harry thinking. He hadn't often seen clear marbles like that before, but he had seen _something _like it.

Then he knew. It resembled a miniature of Trelawney's crystal balls that he had used so often in the Divination classroom. They had never been completely transparent, either. Only mostly, so that Trelawney could loom on the other side of them and sigh sadly about how many of them would never see the future.

Harry knelt down next to Brandon. He flinched again, but didn't move away and didn't take his eyes off the marble.

Harry drew his wand. He thought Brandon would move away from that, but Helester murmured from behind him, "I've tried to get him used to wand motions again. The bastard isn't going to steal his gift of magic from him."

Harry only nodded to show he understood, and cast a spell he didn't like casting, because the effects were overwhelming. But at least those aspects would only be visible to him, and wouldn't disturb Brandon further.

The room around him seemed to light up. Harry could see molecules orbiting in the middle of the walls, and a glittering bloodstain off to the side where someone had died in this room, and the trail of a crushed bug that someone must have killed relatively recently.

But people were the worst to look at, because they shone with blinding light—and darkness, if curses had been cast on them. Healers used this spell on a regular basis, to make out disease and the like, but they usually had to rest afterwards.

Harry narrowed his eyes so he would miss the glow from Helester, brighter because she had lived longer and been through more than Brandon, and focused in on the boy.

Despite his youth, the light zooming around him and coruscating off him was nearly as brilliant as Helester's. _Been through a lot, _Harry thought, in the corner of his mind that was dazzled and nearly shouting with pain. _I'd say so._

But he saw what he'd been looking for, the thing he'd been taught to look for in one Auror course with an eccentric old fellow named Tilvot who held nothing but contempt for "some of these old-fashioned notions they're coming up with today." He saw the thick, clear wall that was crouched to a low level in Brandon's mind, the wall that should have been high and shining, and wasn't.

Harry sucked in a breath. He doubted this was the _reason _that Brandon's father had abused him, but it could easily be a reason that some of the effects of the abuse had lingered so long, and why Mind-Healers—who would be better at this work than Harry himself, he couldn't lie—had been unable to help him more than a little.

Brandon abruptly looked up, and his eyes fastened on Harry.

His ringing, hoarsened cry made the visions explode, and Harry fell to the floor with a groan as the spell ended. Brandon was backed into a corner now, breathing faster as he stared at Harry. The crystalline marble lay on the floor next to him.

Helester put her foot down right next to Harry's hand. "If you've harmed my son," she said pleasantly, "then I'm going to break your throat open."

"He's a Seer," Harry said, and coughed when he heard the words come out hoarse. He must have been screaming himself, although he didn't remember it. He sat up, careful to avoid looking at Brandon in case he set him off again. "That's part of the reason that your husband's abuse has lingered so long. The abuse was so severe that it broke down the barrier that would usually keep Brandon from seeing visions of the future and the past. But now he can, and so he's seeing the abuse happen to him again and again, and probably a lot of future events, too." He gave the staring Helester a faint smile. "I startled him because I cast a spell that let me see echoes of past events around people, and magical gifts and curses. I probably sort of strayed into the realm where he lives most of the time, and he saw me. My past wouldn't have made for a pretty sight."

Helester turned around and stared at Brandon. He had picked up the crystalline marble again and was gazing into it.

"Crystal balls can serve as an anchor for true Seers," Harry told her, making her spin gracefully back towards him. "That marble probably calms him down and lets him see just the present or just some visions for a while. You should get a true crystal ball for him as soon as possible, though. A _real _one. Make sure you aren't buying from a fraud. And if you take him to the section of St. Mungo's that deals with people trapped in visions, they can probably help him. Or a Mind-Healer who's worked with Seers."

"My great-grandmother was a Seer," said Helester, cocking her head. "It wasn't something we liked to advertise, since it only led to people begging us to try and read the future for them. And none of us had inherited her gift." She glanced again at Brandon. "Except for now. I should have thought of that before."

"Why should you have?" Harry asked quietly. "It's not an easy trauma to recognize. And I've never seen a child so young with that trauma." He grimaced a little. What Helester's husband must have done to hurt Brandon so much made him ill to think about. "I would tell you to give the bastard's body a kick from me, but, well, he can't feel it."

"I might do it anyway." Helester turned to study Brandon again. "Great-Grandmother was incapable of being around agitated people for very long," she said suddenly. "Said their emotions stirred up her Inner Eye something fierce. Do you think Brandon might be the same way?"

"I suppose so," said Harry, startled into the simple truth. "I didn't study that in Auror training. I only learned that spell at all because sometimes you need it to see when someone is under a curse."

Helester closed her eyes. "Then I suspect I have made his condition worse, with as often as I have been agitated when I was near him," she murmured.

Harry reached out and touched her arm, making her open her eyes and turn towards him. "You didn't know," he said. "But I suspect that he probably would welcome less violence in his life, including less violent emotions."

Helester gave him a strained smile. "And another visit to the Mind-Healers."

Harry nodded. "Other than getting him a crystal ball, I don't really have any ideas." He looked at Brandon, who was staring into a corner of the room now. He might be seeing a vision of the crime that had left the bloodstain on the wall, Harry thought. The way he had calmed down so fast when the spell ended was as bad a sign, in its own way, as his silent staring was. "I hope that's enough to help him."

"You did what I hoped you could do, and gave me another avenue to investigate," said Helester, pulling him towards the door, probably so that neither of them would upset Brandon more by feeling bad about his situation right in front of him. "What do I owe you?"

Harry hesitated, but he knew he had to accept money for this. It was part of moving on and operating the business. He gave Helester a small nod. "Ten Galleons."

"Done," said Helester, and left the room to get the money.

Harry lingered in the doorway, watching Brandon. He had gone back to looking at his marble, and was turning it from side to side as if trying to see the patterns that weren't etched into its clear glass.

_I hope he finds the help he needs. There's probably nothing else I can do for him right now, but just hoping is hard…_

* * *

"I saw Ex-Weasley today."

"She has a name," Harry muttered on the other side of the table. "And I knew you were going to see her." He kept his attention on his plate as though the fish soup was fascinating.

But Draco could feel the way the tension in his body had changed. He smiled a little, and was about to continue when Scorpius, who had been chattering to them about how Teddy could cast a few simple spells using Andromeda's wand now, looked up abruptly and said, "Who's Ex-Weasley?"

Harry looked up quickly, too. Draco mouthed back, _He has to know sometime_, and turned to Scorpius. "She was the one who was married to Harry for a while," he said. "The way that your mother used to be married to me."

A wistful look overcame Scorpius's face, and he hunched down in his chair a little. Draco could hardly believe that he had mistaken the signs before now. Scorpius _did _miss his mother, and he _did _want her back. Draco hoped that having another parent, and perhaps more frequent visits from Astoria, would help his loneliness.

_And I'm glad that Harry taught me to see what he felt as loneliness, instead of just weakness unbecoming to a Malfoy._

"Oh," said Scorpius. "And she and Uncle Harry don't have kids."

Harry laughed and held out a threatening hand as if he would ruffle Scorpius's hair. Scorpius ducked out of the way, as usual, and put a protective palm on top of his head. Harry looked like he was snickering, Draco saw, and didn't even try to hide it.

"No, I don't have kids with her," said Harry, and if the emotion in his eyes for Scorpius wasn't love, Draco would willingly eat a meal made by Molly Weasley. "You would have met them by now, Scorpius. I would never keep them away from you."

"But I didn't meet Teddy at first." Scorpius looked around as though seeking someone to blame in the corners of the room. "I didn't even know he was there until I was _this old!_ Or I would have seen him before now."

Draco cleared his throat, pulling Scorpius's attention to him with a snap. "I'm afraid I was more to blame for that than Uncle Harry was, Scorpius," he murmured. "I didn't like the idea of trying to reconcile with an aunt and cousin who had never shown any interest in me."

Harry watched him from the corner of an eye, but didn't say anything. And anyway, Draco had had his own talks with Andromeda on the subject. He knew that the lack of interest was a complicated point. It was true, though, that Draco had thought at the time that Andromeda had no interest in reconciling with him, and although he had sometimes been idly curious about Teddy Lupin, he was the son of _Lupin_.

And Draco had had his own son to raise.

"Now, though," said Scorpius, clutching his fork like a weapon. "You won't take Aunt Andromeda and Teddy away."

"No," said Draco gently. "I won't do that."

"Good," said Scorpius, and then he smiled, an expression that Draco felt immensely proud of, if only because he was used to seeing a cousin of it on his own face in mirrors. But Scorpius's was more charming. "Then why did you go and see Ex-Weasley, if Uncle Harry doesn't have kids with her?"

"Her name," said Harry stiffly, "is _Ginny_."

"Ex-Ginny?" Scorpius sounded a little confused now. He had been doing a good job keeping up, Draco thought, but this business of Harry's ex-wife and exactly who she was would confuse some older children, as well.

_And the reasons she divorced him _ought _to be confusing, anyway, _Draco thought savagely, but managed to calm his anger down and answer in a pleasant manner. "No. Her last name was Weasley. Then she married Uncle Harry, and her name was Potter for a while. But now it's Corner. She married someone else, and she's having a kid with him." That was about as clear as he could make it.

Scorpius thought about this in between sips of soup. Then he said, "People should just keep their names all the time," and started a conversation about Teddy so different from what they'd been saying that Draco would have felt awkward trying to continue to talk about Harry's ex-wife.

But Harry's eyes rested meaningfully on him sometimes when Scorpius wasn't looking, and Draco knew they were going to have a conversation about this after dinner, when Scorpius had gone to bed.

That was all right. Draco was looking forward to it.

* * *

"I think you did the right thing," Draco said quietly, leaning forwards to pour more of the one wine they had found that Harry enjoyed into his crystal glass. The glasses had the Malfoy crest on the side of them, of course, but Harry was learning not to mind that, any more than he was the idea of drinking wine on a regular basis. "That's one advantage of having someone with Auror training working with children. You can use spells that other people wouldn't know and recognize conditions that other people can't."

Harry opened his mouth to protest that he hadn't helped Brandon himself, only set him on the road to help, but Draco's narrow look made him lean back and bask in the praise instead. Besides, Draco's face went so soft and pleased that Harry thought it was worthwhile to accept the praise. He swallowed the wine and said, "Now we have to talk about something less pleasant."

"My visit to—Ginny. Yes."

From the strain in Draco's voice, Harry knew how much it had cost him to call her that rather than by the nickname he'd adopted for her. He reached out and squeezed Draco's knee in appreciation. "I don't need all the details," he said. "I just want to know if you think that she'll hold back and stop tormenting me."

Draco's lips changed in the smallest direction of a quirk, which Harry knew was at least meant to resemble a smile. "She hadn't told her husband about wanting to cheat on you when you two were still married. She tried to pretend she had and that he'd accepted it, but I knew she was lying. So we have that to hold over her head."

Harry struggled with that for a silent moment, the fact that he had to rejoice in being able to blackmail, if necessary, the woman he had once loved. He was still struggling with it when Draco clasped his hand. Harry looked up at him.

"I've done what I know how to do," Draco told him quietly. "If she continues to plague you after this, you'll need to make one of two choices. Either you can do what _you _know how to do, and use your knowledge of her to hurt her mentally and make her shut up, or I'll blackmail her and hurt her worse. And Harry? I'll enjoy doing it."

Harry winced. But not because he was thinking about Ginny, not this time. He didn't want Draco to do that because his enjoyment, while fine for him, would hurt _Harry_ if he had to see Draco's face twisted like that.

That decided him.

"I'll deal with it," he said. "If I have to. And in the meantime, I think we have better things to discuss than her."

"I don't disagree with you," Draco said, and leaned in to kiss him with shining eyes.


	47. Play to Win

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Forty-Seven—Play to Win_

"I notice you haven't been practicing the spell I showed you, to dull emotions."

Harry winced a bit, and ducked his head. It seemed so easy, when he was _outside _Healer Brandeis's office, to tell himself that what she said was interesting but not always right, that he could do something against her advice and have it be reasonable. And then he was inside the office and back in front of her soft, disappointed eyes, and all his objections disappeared like snowflakes in an inferno.

"I didn't want to," he said simply. "I found—something new with Draco, and I thought that the spell might affect that, since that was the strongest emotion inside me."

Brandeis paused for a moment, then smiled. "Emotions that give you something you want, and didn't have?"

"Exactly." Harry hesitated once more, but if his Mind-Healer wouldn't understand his excitement and happiness, honestly, she didn't deserve to be his Mind-Healer. "And I even have a child now. Draco's son, Scorpius. He's accepted me into the family and it's…" There weren't words for it except ones that sounded bland, so after a while Harry gave up and used one of them. "Wonderful."

It _had _been wonderful, this past weekend, when he and Draco and Scorpius had visited Andromeda and Teddy like one _family _visiting another, not just a lone person who needed Andromeda and Teddy to let him come in out of the cold. Harry knew Andromeda would insist he had never been just that to her and Teddy, but, well, it was nice to know that he didn't even need to feel that way in the privacy of his own head.

"Good," said Healer Brandeis, and Harry snapped out of his recollections to see her smiling at him. "You deserve some of your own happiness, too, Mr. Potter. I think you know that now."

Harry lifted his head. "You think I didn't know it before?"

"I wondered how much you kept it in mind." Healer Brandeis regarded him for a moment before she nodded. "And the fallout of announcing that you can't have children? Was it as bad as you had thought it would be?"

Harry grimaced a little. "It caused some tensions with my ex-wife, and with my friends." He knew that Ron and Hermione had at least noticed the way Ginny's talking to the papers had ceased, although he was virtually sure they didn't know Draco had threatened her into shutting up. They were currently keeping the sort of distance that involved plenty of firecalls and visits at his office, but a lot of tension, too, and strained smiles. "I think it still does. I mean, she's part of their family, no matter what she does."

Healer Brandeis sat up as though she was going to pounce on something. Harry only had a moment to worry about what it was, because she clarified it for him in the next moment. "And you don't see yourself as part of the Weasley family? That was something you talked about, the first time, that made you fear less for you than I might have done. If you had a family, when your blood one had failed you, then I knew you would be taken care of."

Harry flushed. "Well, now I have a different family. One with Draco and Scorpius."

"And does that cancel out the feeling you've experienced with the Weasleys, apparently for years?" Healer Brandeis asked gently. "I wouldn't think so, unless you're so sure they'll choose your ex-wife's side that you've already exiled yourself from them in your mind."

Harry closed his eyes. The mere thought of never seeing Ron or Hermione, Rose or Hugo, again, made him want to be sick. But the thought of causing trouble with them, forcing them to pick between him and Ginny, made him feel worse. And if they'd been able to survive the past three years since the divorce not choosing between them, what right did Harry have to make them pick now?

"I don't want to make them choose," he whispered.

"Do you think they have to?" Healer Brandeis whispered back, matching his volume exactly. Harry found it a little creepy how she did that. "Would you demand it of them?"

Harry took a deep breath and opened his eyes. "No. But I'm afraid Ginny might, or they might think that supporting her right to speak out against me means choosing her side."

"Why does she have a _right _to speak out against you?"

Harry was able to snort at that, and not feel anything but bitter amusement that was all directed against his friends and Ginny, without guilt. "Because she's pregnant, apparently. And their little sister, and no one can persuade her to stop—except Draco, when he did it." Healer Brandeis simply nodded. Harry hadn't told her any details of how Draco had done it, just that he had. "So what else can they do, if not persuade her? They've told me they don't have the right to stop her or hold her back."

"Yet, they expect civilized behavior of _you_."

Harry darted a glance at Healer Brandeis, who was watching him in fascination. "I would still want to spare them suffering," he said. "No matter what Ginny had said. No matter whether Draco had been able to make her stop."

"I think," said Healer Brandeis softly, "that you have to consider whether this tense truce is the relationship you want with your friends. Because it is probably the one you will have to maintain, unless you or your ex-wife change something. And I do not think she would change it in any way you'd favor."

"No," said Harry. "I just wonder—if they feel they can't tell her to do anything differently now, is that going to change if I get involved? It probably won't."

"It will change," said Healer Brandeis. "Because nothing stays the same. Because we grow and change whether or not we want to. And as I said, I fear it would grow into you retreating from your friendships because you want so much to preserve your ex-wife's relationship with her family—when she does not seem worried about preserving yours." She caught and held his eyes, in that forceful way she had when Harry least expected it. "I know that you will no longer say her relationship with them should have priority because she is their blood family. I know you no longer place blood family in such a position above adopted family."

Harry swallowed. "You're right. I don't."

Healer Brandeis leaned back and smiled. When she flourished her wand, a silver basin of water floated into the room. Harry tensed for a second, thinking it was a Pensieve, but there was absolutely no sign of that, as he could admit a moment later. The basin had a pattern of leaves around the top, but the liquid inside looked like ordinary water, not the silvery shimmer of memory.

"Now," said Healer Brandeis, and spun her wand into the water. Colored shapes trailed it, and formed a glittering symbol-building of octagons and linked hexagons, perfect, brilliant, shimmering. "What do you think of this? This is a representation of the importance that you are currently placing on several sources of your strongest emotions."

Harry leaned over the basin. "What's that one?" he asked, pointing to a blue circle, the second-largest shape.

"Your relationship with your ex-wife and her family," said Healer Brandeis simply. "No longer as important as it once was, nor as stressful, as you can see from the cool blue color."

"And this one?" Harry had to resist the urge to touch the largest shape, a shining green triangle. He thought he knew, but he wanted Healer Brandeis to say it anyway.

"That is your relationship with your newer family." Healer Brandeis smiled at him. "I don't think that it will diminish in size over time. Green is a color of healing, rebirth, new life." She swiveled her wand again, and the shapes dissolved into swirls that reminded Harry of water going down a drain. They disappeared in the same way, too.

"You have their support, your Malfoys' support," Healer Brandeis said, and leaned back to consider him. "And while I doubt that will diminish in size, except in the ordinary way of fluctuations that trouble any relationship in the form of arguments, I am concerned your blue circle could change color, and grow."

Harry grimaced. "You weren't as concerned about what I thought about Ginny last time."

"Because your resentment was not the same," Healer Brandeis said. "And it is not currently poisoning you, but only because you have given up, in some ways, on maintaining a close relationship to your Weasley family."

Harry drummed his fingers on his knee. He wanted to say that he hadn't given up, that his friends would always be important to him, but it was true that he had let them drift away at least a little since he'd started spending more time with Draco and Scorpius. He had thought it was the best thing to do, to give Ron and Hermione in particular time to get used to Draco.

But what about the rest of them? He hadn't spent time with George and Molly and Arthur on a regular basis in…months at least. It felt like years, but Harry had been over to the Burrow. Just never when Ginny was there.

"I don't see how we can get back on a completely comfortable footing," he muttered, barely aware that he was talking aloud. "I mean, not as long as they think I'm the one who wronged her."

"Have you told them the whole truth about the ending of your marriage?"

Harry blinked and looked up at Healer Brandeis. He really _had _managed to forget her presence for a minute. "As much as wouldn't make me look like the villain."

"And her?" Healer Brandeis cocked her head. "Or would this be another means to avoid forcing them to choose between you?"

Harry blinked. "Well, yes. Maybe. I mean, I don't know how much Ginny told them. It's possible that they think we're both to blame, just like I do. Just like I thought Ginny did," he added. He had been surprised when she showed up at his announcement mostly because he'd thought she'd moved on, but also because he hadn't known she thought of herself as a complete innocent and in the right.

Bitterness stirred in the back of his throat. Harry swallowed and shifted his weight. Then he swallowed it again, forcing it back down. No, he hadn't ever asked what Ginny had told Ron and Hermione.

Maybe it was time to speak honestly. Maybe it was time to stop assuming that of course his friends would abandon him once he wasn't their brother-in-law anymore, and just speak up about it directly.

"There, that looks like a decision you're happy to make," said Healer Brandeis gently.

Harry blinked, then grinned. Yes, he felt as though someone had picked up that large blue circle in Healer Brandeis's symbolic representation and thrown it away into a corner, off his shoulders. He smiled at her. "Thanks."

"My job," said Healer Brandeis, but the smile on her face said how much satisfaction she took in that job. "And next time you come, perhaps you'll be happy to tell me about the other thing I can sense you holding back. The way that you coped for three years when you felt as if you had no family you could call your own and your friends couldn't sympathize with you completely," she added, when Harry raised his eyebrows at her.

Harry flushed. "I haven't told you because it's childish," he said. No denying that there had been a coping mechanism—not when Healer Brandeis was the one who had taught him to think that way.

"More childish than thinking you never needed to deal with what your failed marriage was doing to your relationship to your friends?" Healer Brandeis's voice was very gentle. "I haven't thought that anything you told me was pathetic, Harry, if that's what you're afraid of. I never will. I think that you've been through immense difficulties and tragedies, and it's not surprising that you needed something to lean on in the midst of that. I'm here to help you see that eventually, you don't need to lean on much of anything at all."

Harry gave a choppy, uncertain nod. He couldn't imagine not depending on Draco, at least a little, or not letting Scorpius soothe the void that had been left by imagining he couldn't have children.

Healer Brandeis sat with him in silence for a while, and then nodded and stood up. "When you're ready, you'll tell me," she predicted. Then her voice softened. "In the meantime, think on what you're going to tell your friends. I know that you don't want to force them to choose, but like this, you're drifting further and further from them and denying them much of a choice at all."

"Yes, I know," Harry whispered. And it was hard _not _see it that way, now that she had pointed it out.

He stood and hesitated, then reached out and gripped Healer Brandeis's hand. She took his and shook it warmly.

"Go and be at peace," she said, and smiled at him. "Then come back and tell me all about it."

Harry did like having a Mind-Healer who could make him laugh at the end of his appointments.

* * *

Draco paused and tilted his head at Harry. "Healer Brandeis is a skilled Healer and one of the best in her field," he said.

Harry played with the chocolate-covered strawberries that the house-elves had served them for pudding. Scorpius was currently building a tower of his, and seemed too thrilled about the unprecedented opportunity to play with his food to pay much attention to their conversation. "There's a 'but' somewhere in there."

"But I don't think you should confront the Weasleys," said Draco. "You've done enough, and it's up to _them _to reach out to you now."

He congratulated himself on the restraint of that little speech. For one thing, he hadn't called any of the Weasleys names. He hadn't said he thought they were idiots for choosing a sister who seemed to be as unpleasant to them and her own husband as she was to Harry over a patient and forgiving man like Harry. But Harry was shaking his head slowly. At least his eyes seemed to see Draco instead of a distant sight.

"Healer Brandeis said that my friends probably think I'm just too occupied with my new life with you to pay attention to them," he whispered. "I think that if they're going to avoid me, or lose hold of me—or if I'm going to lose the Weasleys as my family—then it should be because of a conscious choice, a _conversation_, not because we just gave up on each other."

Draco grimaced. "I don't know how I can stay with you to make sure that you get respected, and yet not make the situation more awkward than it should be with my mere presence."

"You shouldn't be there at all," said Harry, and now his eyes were glittering with his version of independence.

Draco watched him patiently. Harry just watched him back with the same patience, even cupping his chin in his hands and forsaking the pretense of eating altogether. Draco finally sighed and said, "_Fine._ Suppose you tell me what your idea was about confronting Ex-Weasley. Were you going to invite her to the Manor?"

"I was going to speak with Ron and Hermione," Harry said. "Not her. And no. I think we ought to meet in a neutral setting. One of the little restaurants in Diagon Alley, or maybe Andromeda's house."

Draco nodded slowly. "That would work. As long as we picked a middle-brow restaurant so that Weasley wouldn't feel I was remarking on his lack of money."

Harry stared evenly at him. "Not that Ron is as poor as he was now that he's making a good wage as an Auror," he said, "but what implied to you I was going to let you come along and speak to them?"

Draco winced, a sharp sensation like a repressed slap cutting across his mind. "Really, Harry," he said. "How can we get them used to you having me and Scorpius as your family if you're just going to avoid all contact between us?"

"We'll get them used to it," Harry said. "Later. For now, I'm going to have Ron and Hermione leave their kids and siblings and parents elsewhere, and I'm going to meet them on my own, too. Just the three of us. That's the best way to find out whether I'm going to have any chance with the rest of the Weasleys. If they can't get over this feeling of utter loyalty to Ginny and helplessness in the face of whatever she wants to do, then I'll know that Molly and George and the rest of them can't, either."

Draco straightened up. "You mean to cut me out of this and leave things just as they were, don't you?" he asked quietly.

Harry blinked and stared at him. "What are you talking about? Of course you won't be left out in the cold. I want to do this so they'll accept you and Scorpius eventually. I know that right now, it wouldn't be good for any of us if I pushed for too much. You would accidentally say something cold—"

"Or on purpose," Draco muttered, although that somewhat undercut his goal in speaking to Harry.

"Or on purpose," Harry said, with a quick, darting smile. "There's too much history there, and it's not the kind that can be overcome in a day."

Draco reached out to him and slowly slid his fingers against Harry's wrist. "We overcame it, and there was a worse history between us."

Harry lifted his eyebrows. "Worse than the history of your blood feud with the Weasleys? Worse than the history that taught you had to be prejudiced against people like Hermione?" He leaned in, and his eyes were soft and searching. "You and I were on opposite sides of the war, but I always had the feeling that we had more of an individual hatred, without the family connections and blood purity nonsense."

Draco hesitated. He could remember despising Harry for being a half-blood, he was certain, even if he couldn't call that exact memory to mind at the moment.

"It's all right," said Harry, his eyes shining as he examined Draco. "I know that I didn't behave the best, either, and we did manage to overcome it. I hope someday, you and Ron and Hermione can speak civilly to each other. I won't ask for more." His gaze slid to Scorpius, whose tower of strawberries had fallen. Scorpius was peeking at them apprehensively from under a strand of blond hair, waiting for his punishment. "But maybe, Scorpius can play with Rose and Hugo someday, side-by-side."

"_Hugo_," Draco said, because he had to say something. "A ridiculous name. It sounds Muggle."

"Draco," said Harry warningly, but when Draco looked at him innocently, he rolled his eyes and went on, "No one who names their kid Scorpius has any right to object to something like Hugo."

Draco would have said that Scorpius didn't sound Muggle and that was its great virtue, but for now, he needed to talk to his son. He turned around in his chair and said calmly, "Scorpius, why shouldn't you have done that?"

"Um," said Scorpius, and he looked at his hands, while he flushed and fidgeted and gripped the edge of the table harder than ever. "Because you said not to?"

"That's one part of it," said Draco. "What's the other part?" He could see Izzy peering in through the doorway of the dining room, but she obviously wasn't going to come in until Draco gave permission. And Draco wanted to hear his son speak the obvious, wanting words.

Scorpius bit his lip harder, and squinted. "Sorry?"

"No," said Draco gently, "the other part is that the house-elves will have to clean this up, and it's going to take a while and make a mess." He waved his wand, and the strawberries and chocolate vanished from the tablecloth, although he knew the house-elves would come and wash it anyway. "Unless I do it. But you need to think about what you can do before you do it, because there won't always be spells and house-elves to take care of it."

Scorpius gave him an intensely questioning look. Draco nodded. "Yes. When you go to Hogwarts, for instance, if you make a mess with a potion in a cauldron, then you'll have to clean it up. You won't be able to use magic on it, and no house-elf is going to do it for you."

"Oh." Scorpius seemed to waver between considering the lesson the right way, the way that Draco wanted him to, and considering that Hogwarts was still years away. Then he brightened a little. "But sometimes there will be spells and house-elves around, so I can do things like that?"

Draco fought against the urge to shut his eyes. But Harry chuckled quietly behind him and tapped the back of his shoulder blade. "I think I can handle this," he murmured quietly, for Draco's ears alone.

Draco hesitated, then moved his shoulders in response. Harry leaned forwards around him and said, "Sometimes, Scorpius, people might get tired of cleaning up your messes. That's when you would really be in trouble, even if they didn't punish you."

"Why?" Scorpius sounded as though escaping with no punishments was the kind of miracle he would happily pay for.

"Because they might not clean up after you," said Harry. "And the mess would be left there, stinking and smearing all over your hands, until _you _did something about it."

Draco held back his chuckle as he opened his eyes. Harry had hit just the right note. Scorpius liked creating messes, but they should also be gone before he next came back into the room, or he would throw a fit and act like he was about to faint. Scorpius's face was all wrinkled up now, and he shook his head frantically back and forth. "I don't want that to happen!"

"Then stop creating so many messes," said Harry, with all the appearance of earnestness, "and people won't get as tired of cleaning them up as quickly."

"Yes, all right," said Scorpius, with a sigh that made Draco smile, and he went back to eating the new portion of the strawberries that Izzy had placed in front of him.

Draco leaned back towards Harry. Harry touched his shoulder once and breathed, "I can handle our family. Give me the chance to handle the people who used to be mine? And might be again."

Draco was silent. Then he nodded. He didn't think he needed to express his fear, which was that Weasley and Granger would manage to take Harry from him. It probably wasn't true, and even if they convinced Harry that Ex-Weasley wasn't so bad, Draco had already threatened her.

And he couldn't see Harry turning his back on Draco and Scorpius, not now.

Harry smiled and leaned in to kiss Draco on the lips. Scorpius, looking up from his plate, made a disgusted noise.

"_You _shouldn't kiss all the time," he said. "Because someday no one will want to watch you!"

He appeared somewhat offended when Draco and Harry both lost control of their laughter.


	48. Meeting at Andromeda's House

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Forty-Eight—Meeting At Andromeda's _

"I suppose you'll want me to leave you alone?"

Andromeda's voice was low and amused, which Harry didn't mind. He was mostly glad that she wasn't getting upset about Harry asking to use her house, and then not being invited to the conversation that would actually take place there. He smiled at her and nodded, waving around the glass of water she'd given him. "I think we'll be fine. It's not like we can't use _Aguamenti _to fill the carafe again if we get thirsty."

He, Ron, and Hermione were in one of the downstairs drawing rooms, the one that had a smooth, shiny table in the middle of the room and the couches and chairs arranged around it in a small circle. A carafe of water now sat on the table as well, along with the glasses that Ron and Hermione hadn't touched yet. They were too busy watching Harry.

"Very well," said Andromeda. "Teddy has been wanting to go and examine the new brooms in Quality Quidditch Supplies. I suspect this is the perfect chance to take him." She gently half-shut the door, and then paced away up the corridor outside. Harry could hear her calling to Teddy as she went.

Harry turned around and nodded to his friends. "Thank you for coming."

"It wasn't like we had a _lot _of choice," Ron muttered, and ignored the way that Hermione shook her head chidingly at him. "Your invitation was pretty direct. _Meet to talk about whether we still have a friendship, _indeed."

"You sound like Hermione, with the 'indeed,'" Harry pointed out, and sipped his water. "Did you two take Polyjuice when I wasn't looking?"

"We don't want to lose your friendship," Ron snapped, and Harry was glad that he _wasn't _drinking his water yet, or probably Andromeda would have found one of her glasses smashed. "That ought to be pretty bloody obvious. What were you thinking?"

"That you might want to stop being friends with me because of me dating Draco," Harry said. "And because of my fight with Ginny. It seemed obvious to _me _that you cared more about not stopping her than you did about her hurting me."

That had been intended to provoke them, and Harry was glad to see it had worked. Hermione flushed, while Ron leaned forwards and jabbed one finger at Harry as if he was a Dark wizard in an interrogation Ron was conducting.

"You _know _that we don't want to get involved, Harry," Ron said. "Your fight with Gin was three years in the past. You could tell people that you couldn't have children if you wanted. That was your right."

"But then Ginny showed up and started wailing to the papers that I 'betrayed' her," said Harry. "It did make me wonder why no one in your family was talking to her and telling her to stop embarrassing herself. Especially because of what you said last time we talked."

"What was that?" Hermione asked.

Harry raised his eyebrows. He had assumed Ron would have told her, especially since Hermione was the one who had helped Harry coordinate that talk with the reporters where Ginny had showed up, but it seemed he hadn't. And right now, Ron was flushing himself and avoiding her eyes a little.

"He told me that no one could stop Ginny," Harry said. "That she could go around saying whatever she wanted, and no one could get in her way. That I'd betrayed one of her secrets with my announcement, and she had the right to talk about me."

"I didn't put it that way!" Ron sat up, and now he was the one who looked like a Dark wizard in the middle of an interrogation. "I just said that she had a right to talk, and the papers were saying some pretty awful things about her, and that Harry would always have a place with us when his relationship with Malfoy didn't work out."

"_When_," Harry said, and rolled his eyes.

"If, fine, then," Ron said, and waved his hand before he turned to Hermione. "I was only telling the truth! He should have consulted Ginny before he said that."

Hermione gave what sounded like an exhausted sigh, which made Harry wonder if she'd argued about this with Ron and if it was the reason she was keeping so quiet now, and turned to Harry. "It would have been nice. It would have saved trouble in the long run."

Harry gritted his teeth. "And if she'd told me that she didn't want me to say anything about it, so that she could preserve her precious privacy and this illusion—which was apparently important to her—that we divorced for some other reason? Would I have to keep silent for the rest of my life and endure the rumors about me wanting to spend time with children for Dark reasons?" His frustration overwhelmed him suddenly, and he lashed out with his hand and made the table ring, and Hermione and Ron jump. "Why the _fuck _is Ginny's privacy so _fucking _important? Does her being pregnant make everyone _else _mindlessly concerned about that kid in her belly?"

"You don't have to say it that way, mate." Ron's voice was low and ugly now. "Not in front of Hermione."

"I think I do." Harry stared back and forth between them. "Well? You were supportive of me until Ginny got pregnant? Or until I started wanting to tell the truth about myself? Or until I got involved with Malfoy? Which one of them was it?"

"You—" Hermione began.

"You being involved with Malfoy doesn't _help_!" Ron's ears looked like embers under his hair. "You have to admit it looks weird, mate, you being so involved with him when he was your enemy for years! And when he bullied Hermione, and he wanted to torture Ginny, and he made fun of me all the time!"

"Look," said Harry. "I'm in love with him. It's hard to picture for you, but he has changed." He paused as something occurred to him. "Would you believe him if he apologized?"

"No," said Ron and Hermione simultaneously.

"If he tried to do something else to make up for what he did?"

"No." That was Ron this time, while Hermione looked a little more uncertain.

"Then what's the point of me apologizing for dating him or him doing anything?" Harry spread his hands. "Since you won't believe it anyway."

Ron looked at his hands. "He could try," he muttered. "It says a lot, that he won't even try."

"He could have been worse about Ginny than he was, too," Harry said, deciding that he might as well lay everything out there in case they objected. "He wanted to hurt her. He's very protective of me."

Ron bolted to his feet, and now his face was so flaming red that Harry might have been afraid he would have a heart attack if he didn't know that Ron's heart was fine. "If he lays a _finger _on my little sister—"

"You don't have to worry about that." Harry stared coolly at him. "He won't. I asked him not to."

Ron sat back down with a thump. "So he isn't going to leave her alone because it's the decent thing to do, but because you asked him to?"

"Yeah." Harry leaned back on Andromeda's couch and tried to remind himself to play it cool, not to let the angry tide sweep him away. For one thing, it would let him make his points better and not be affected the way Ron was. For another, there was Hermione, who hadn't spoken yet. "Strange that leaving people alone is something decent people do, and yet Ginny can't master it. Isn't it?"

Ron's face slowly cooled. He bowed his head and stirred his finger in his water glass and didn't say a word. Hermione muttered, after a moment, "We are sorry about what happened with Ginny. But we can't just—I don't know, what do you want us to do, Harry, shut her up in a dungeon?"

"Make it clear that what she's doing is stupid and you don't approve of it," said Harry clearly. "That doesn't seem like a huge deal to _me_. She might stop if the united disapproval of her family came down on her. As it is, everyone, even her husband, just waves their hands and clucks and acts like she's a chicken that needs be to shooed back to its pen. I know that you kept saying you couldn't restrain her, but did anyone _try_?"

"I talked to her," Hermione reluctantly. "She was so consumed with bitterness against you she didn't listen."

Harry nodded, and turned to Ron. "And you? I know you said I could come and stay with you if I broke up with Draco, but you also said that you could understand why Ginny got upset with me."

Ron kept looking down. "He's our enemy," he whispered. "And Ginny's my sister."

Harry sighed, tiredly. "And I'm your friend. Look, Ron, if she takes sides, you're going to have to, too. I stayed away from it for three years because I didn't _want _to force you to take sides. But if you're going to sit here and tell me endlessly that she can do whatever she wants because she's your sister, then I will have to walk away. To me, that's supporting her."

Ron clenched his hand on the edge of the water glass. "She can't do whatever she wants," he muttered, voice low. "But you could have been nicer about it."

"About _what_?" Harry snapped. "Making an announcement that will let me live my life? Or divorcing her because she wanted to fuck someone else and have his child?"

Ron recoiled. Hermione reached out and pressed down hard on his hand. Harry wasn't sure if that was to reassure him or because she was trying to keep him from doing anything rash. She faced Harry and said, "We didn't know that you'd put it like that."

"It was like that," Harry said, and ignored his usual impulse to say that it was more complicated and both he and Ginny had behaved badly. All that did was make Ron think that Harry wasn't _really _angry at Ginny, and he could go on supporting and encouraging her. "We divorced for a bunch of reasons, but that was one of them. She was choosing to live her own life even before the marriage ended. You can't sit there, and tell me that I—that I have to be happy with that."

Hermione winced. "No," she murmured, and she and Ron exchanged a private look. Harry hadn't seen it often, but he thought he knew what it meant anyway. Hermione was telling Ron to let her handle this.

Ron turned the other way and flopped against the back of the couch, his arms folded and his face locked in a scowl. Hermione sighed and shook her head.

"No one tried to restrain Ginny because we _have _been worried about her," she said. "We thought—well, most of us thought that she would get upset if someone argued with her. And that might have a bad effect on the baby."

Harry relaxed a little. At least there was a reason for it, even if it was a stupid reason.

"So would getting upset and yelling at me," he said. "She's already upset. Didn't any of you think of that?"

"There was a grandchild to think of," Hermione whispered. "And a niece or nephew."

Harry felt a small shard of ice stab into his heart. Hermione had probably been left out of that decision because she wasn't a Weasley by blood and she was Harry's friend, since she said that she _had _tried to reason with Ginny.

But it confirmed that he would never be as important to the Weasleys as Ginny was—and not even because she was their sister or daughter. Because she could have blood children, and he couldn't. Because of something that wasn't his _fault_.

Harry wondered bleakly, for a moment, what would have happened if he had convinced Ginny to adopt. Would their adopted child always have been less important to the Weasleys than a blood one?

"Right," he said, standing up. "So, for reasons that don't even make sense given that Ginny is already upset, none of you are going to stop her. Right."

His heart was pounding, he was breathless, he was dizzy. He tried to take a step away from the couch and ended up leaning against it. It felt like he was losing his best friends.

_Probably because I am._

"Damn it, mate—I didn't mean—"

Harry flinched back from Ron's reaching hand. "Don't touch me," he said quietly, and then laughed. "Why would you want to? I can't have blood children like your precious little sister can. And I'm dating the enemy, you said. Well, that must make me the enemy, too. You might as well let me leave. I never wanted to hurt Ginny's kid, either, but I'm not going to coo over it because it's a _Weasley _and any children I adopted can't be."

Ron shook his head, mutely, and then turned around and looked at Hermione as if she was the one who could make this better. She probably was, Harry thought mutinously as she stood up and approached him around the couch. Because she wasn't Ron, and she wasn't a Weasley, and she said she had talked to Ginny. Those things were the only reasons Harry was willing to give her a chance.

Hermione gently took his hands. "No, we weren't thinking like that," she said, calm and sane. "I did try to talk to Ginny, but when I saw that no one else was going to, I thought I'd better stop. If her family couldn't get her to stop, I couldn't."

"And you're not her family because you're not blood, just married into it," Harry said, nodding to her. "You don't need to explain things to me, Hermione. I see how it is."

"_No_," Ron said again, but Hermione turned and gave him a glare, and he shut up. Hermione sighed and turned back to Harry.

"I phrased that badly," she said. "The same way Andromeda did when she accidentally drove you away." Her hands squeezed comfortingly on Harry's again. "The truth of it is—Harry, we felt sorry for her and for you, but it seemed as though you weren't all that interested in coming to Weasley family gatherings, and she was pregnant, and Molly had given up hope of getting a grandchild from her daughter. So we let all of those things matter to us more than what you felt, and we told ourselves that it was probably all right with you anyway, since you weren't coming around anymore. It was wrong of us. I'm sorry."

Harry could at least listen to that, because it involved apologies instead of trying to defend Ginny like she was a saint. He nodded shortly. "But I think it's probably still better to only visit you at prearranged times," he said, "and without Draco and Scorpius, if you're so insistent that you can't ever see them."

"It's hard to think of you dating Malfoy," Hermione agreed slowly. "But I think part of that is because it's Malfoy—and only part of it. It would be hard to see you dating anyone, after Ginny."

Harry ripped his hands away from hers. "But it's not weird that she got married to someone else? _She's_ allowed to have a life, and I'm not?"

"I'm still phrasing this badly." Hermione rubbed her forehead. "It was just—you didn't seem to care that much for the last three years, Harry. And then suddenly you did, and wanted to date someone permanently, and adopt their child as your own, and strike back against the rumors surrounding you, and leave the Aurors, and all the rest of it. What changed?"

"No," said Harry, although he was perfectly well-aware of what had. _Ethan. _"You don't get to hear that without a promise that you're not going to tell Ginny."

Hermione blinked rapidly. "You think we would? Does it have something to do with her?"

Harry held her eyes, aware that his cheeks were flushing. "Even if it did, you should keep it secret because _I asked you to_. Just like I should be able to tell the truth about myself _because I want to. _You're putting her feelings first, constantly, and that's exactly why I don't want to tell you. Because your world revolves around her more than mine did in the wake of the divorce."

"She's _pregnant_," Ron muttered into his hands. "And she's my _little sister_."

Harry shrugged. "Then you can leave the room, and I'll tell Hermione, if she can make that promise and you can't."

Ron jerked his head up, and from the way that the color was finally draining from his face, Harry thought he might have got through at last. "No," Ron whispered. "You're making it sound like I'm not even your _friend_."

Harry looked at him, and he knew his eyes were glittering and he probably looked less than pleasant. Well, Ron would have to live with that. "You'll have to choose. Friend, or big brother? I didn't want you to make the choice, but now I do."

Ron looked at him, and opened his mouth, and closed it. He stood. For a second, Harry thought he would leave, and he tried to brace himself to bear the loss of Ron's friendship. He knew he wouldn't be able to imagine it, not until it was actually happening to him, but he also knew that if Ron and Hermione kept putting Ginny above him, their friendship was over anyway.

Then Ron whispered, "I promise that I won't tell her. No matter what you tell us."

"And I promise the same," Hermione said. She had got hold of Harry's hands again without him noticing. She squeezed to emphasize it.

"All right," said Harry. He wasn't trembling the way he once would have been at the thought of telling them about Ethan. He had confessed that, and worse, to Draco, and Draco was a calming and sustaining presence in his mind even if he was talking to his friends alone. "I started keeping a journal. A diary of another life. I pretended my name was Ethan Starfall, and I had a wife and three children and a perfect life."

They both stared at him. Then tears filled Hermione's eyes. "I never knew you were that lonely," she whispered.

Harry made an awkward motion with his head. He had never expected Hermione to take it so much to heart. "It sustained me. I'm not that lonely anymore, because Draco found me, and I found Draco. And Scorpius," he had to add, because he knew well enough that he and Draco would never have reached out for each other if not for Scorpius.

"I didn't know," Hermione whispered. "I saw you writing, but I never made the connection. How did I never make the connection?"

_She seems more upset that she didn't figure it out than that it existed in the first place, _Harry thought, amused. "Listen," he said, having thought of a way that might make certain things more acceptable to them. "I was crushed by my divorce from Ginny. I learned how to survive through writing as Ethan. Now, I don't need that anymore. But that doesn't mean that I'm ready to give up everything that you don't approve of—or that she doesn't approve of—and go back to being the Harry you knew. The Harry you knew is dead. He probably had enough of Ethan in him during the last few years that he started to fade once I gave up writing as Ethan, anyway. And I can't be Ginny's perfect husband, and I can't be someone who pampers and puts her first the way her family and husband do. So. This is the way it has to be. I found someone who makes me happy. If you can't accept that, fine. But I won't accept the way you spoil Ginny, either."

"Will we never get to spend time with you, mate?" Ron had his arms folded, but loosely, nothing like the tight clench they'd been in at first. "Because you'll always be over _there_?"

"Draco has a name," Harry told him pointedly. "So does 'there.' I'm living in Malfoy Manor now, practically. And no. I'll come and see you privately, the way I've done. But I'm not going to spend time with the extended family. You'll have to have Ginny and me over separately, the way you've always done."

He hesitated, then shrugged. "If you want to spend more time with her once the baby's born, that's your choice, but it _does _mean that I'm going to spend more time with Draco. Her baby isn't the center of _my _life."

"I know," said Hermione. "And I think we all drifted into putting her first mostly because you didn't complain and we didn't think about what you felt, because you seemed all right with it. And then this happened."

"Right." Harry crossed his gaze with hers. "I'm not going to put up with her saying whatever she wants about me in the papers, either." He didn't mention that he thought she probably wouldn't do that anymore, thanks to Draco's revenge. It was _possible_, and they had to know ahead of time what his reaction would be.

"I know," said Hermione, and bowed her head. "I'll talk to Molly. I can't promise that she'll see things from the same angle I do, but at least it'll probably soften her."

"Good," said Harry, and turned to Ron.

Ron struggled for a second, and then burst out, "She's my _baby sister_. And he's _Malfoy_."

"I'm not asking you to like him," Harry told him bluntly. "Only to stop making her the center of the universe and feeling she can do no wrong. Or even feeling that she's embarrassing but just standing back and letting her embarrass herself and you. She might feel differently about this someday, you know. Have you thought about the way that _she'll _react if she does change her mind and discovers that you let her charge around doing stupid things because she was pregnant?"

Ron hesitated, then gave a short, choppy nod. "I didn't know what it looked like from your point-of-view. I'm sorry, mate."

Harry relaxed. An apology and an acknowledgment was all he'd really wanted. "Good."

It remained to be seen how well his friends would keep their word, of course. But if a lot of it came from him not complaining and their not knowing that he'd had to turn to Ethan to survive the last three years…

A lot of it was understandable.

_And I don't owe Ginny anything. I think they finally understand that._


	49. Loads Lifted

Thanks again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Forty-Nine—Loads Lifted_

"I don't see why you had to give them another chance if they were only going to snipe at you when you did it," Draco muttered. He was face-down on the bed currently, and he could hear Harry moving around behind him, putting on the casual robes he thought were important for a day at the office.

Draco rolled over and watched him. Harry snorted as he drew his head through the collar. Draco thought idly that these robes made him look more handsome than the Auror uniform.

"I wanted to give them another chance because we've been through a lot together," Harry told him, and bent down to pick up his boots from the floor. He'd kept the dragonhide boots because they weren't specifically part of the Auror uniform, and Draco could admit that they looked good on him. "If I just turned away from them because of Ginny, then that would give her another triumph."

Draco grunted. He hated to admit it, but he could see the merit of that line of reasoning, little as he liked sharing Harry with Granger and Weasley. He sat up on the bed and murmured, "Scorpius is wanting to visit Teddy when you're there."

"Oh, we can do that this weekend," Harry said, and gave Draco the smile that most endeared him to Draco. It looked like a kid excited by life. Draco had wondered, a little, whether he'd be able to smile like that after the problems with his friends and ex-wife and the media. "And I thought I might take them to see Hogwarts."

Draco blinked. "Really?"

"Well, Neville is working there, now, and he loves to show off his greenhouses." Draco rolled his eyes, and Harry laughed. "There are plenty of dangerous plants that Neville can control but which still ought to thrill a five-year-old and a nine-year-old."

"And if someone were to want to stay outside and enjoy the sight of the castle…?"

"He could do that," Harry pointed out tolerantly, and turned towards the door. "All right, I'm off. Say hello to Scorpius for me."

"I will," Draco promised. Usually, Harry ate breakfast with them, but today, he wanted to be off early. Some new client, he'd said, who'd requested absolute privacy.

_Strange that all of them want the one gift they won't give Harry. _But Draco didn't need Harry's case to tell him how hypocritical the British wizarding public was.

When he left the room, he could hear the house-elves fussing around Scorpius's room. Draco covered the distance between the two parts of the house at not-quite-a-run, but paused before he opened Scorpius's door. He would only upset his son further by appearing as if he was flustered himself. He had learned that lesson from the way that Scorpius had reacted to Draco's own rage after the divorce.

"No. No! I feel _fine!_"

Scorpius was screaming that at a few house-elves who were trying to get him to lie down on the bed. Izzy stood near the door wringing her hands, which made dread mount in Draco's stomach. He couldn't remember the last time something had upset Izzy.

"What is it?" he asked, keeping his voice even as he moved forwards. Scorpius hadn't noticed him yet, too busy struggling with the house-elves. Draco wondered if that wouldn't be the best state of affairs, at least until he knew what was going on.

"Oh, Master Draco!" Izzy turned and almost collapsed at his feet. Her face was covered with tears. "Young Master Scorpius is being sick!"

Draco nodded as if he was unaffected, although he was reeling internally. Scorpius had only been as flushed as he was now a few times in his life. "What symptoms does he have?"

"Young Master is feverish, and he woke up screaming from what he is saying is pain," said Izzy, and pointed at Scorpius's side. "But now he is saying he is fine." She looked at Draco again, anxiously.

"I'll take a look at him," said Draco. He knew he wasn't a Healer, but he thought he at least knew when he should take Scorpius to St. Mungo's and when he shouldn't. He hadn't been a parent for five years for nothing.

He stepped up beside the bed, and Scorpius went quiet and blinked at him when he saw Draco there. Draco smiled at him and put his hand on Scorpius's forehead. He hoped he hid his wince. Scorpius was already as hot as the infection from a wound, and the skin felt oddly tight and stretched.

"Daddy," said Scorpius, and grabbed his hand, and closed his eyes.

"I can't let you go to sleep just yet, Scorp," said Draco, and his voice was as gentle as he knew how to make it. _Don't let it shake. That's the most important thing you can do with your voice right now, is comfort him and not let him see how afraid you are. _"Izzy said that you were hurt, and then you said you were fine. Can you tell me how it feels right now? Are you in pain, or not?"

Scorpius rolled towards him and murmured. He already seemed half-asleep, but he managed to reach down with one hand and prod at his side. He looked as if he was poking himself right under his ribs, Draco saw, memorizing the sight of the place. "It hurts here, Daddy," he said, and drifted off with a sigh, cuddling towards his pillows and the side of the bed. Draco reached out and gently rolled him back into another position so he could see the area Scorpius had pointed to better. At least Scorpius looked as though he wasn't in active pain right now, although his breathing was rusty in a way Draco didn't like.

When Draco lifted Scorpius's shirt, he winced again, and barely managed to keep a hiss of panic from escaping his lips. There was a swelling there, one that stuck up from between Scorpius's ribs. If Draco had simply seen Scorpius in pain without seeing the feverish symptoms, then he would have been sure he was looking at a broken bone. But this was something else, and when he reached out and just gently let his fingertips rest on the bump, he could feel how yielding and spongy the top was, how hard it was right beneath.

_I have to get him to St. Mungo's._

Draco gently cast a charm that would lighten Scorpius's weight—no dropping him on a tricky turn of the stairs or anything else, since Draco wasn't about to go through the Floo with Scorpius feeling like this—and another that would keep a thin cushion of air between Scorpius and Draco at all times. Then he scooped him up and turned to Izzy. "You're to go straight to Harry," he said. "You can find him?"

Izzy drew herself up in what would probably have been offended pride from anyone but a house-elf. "Izzy is knowing the trace of Master Harry Potter's magical signature," she said. "Izzy is having cleaned his _room_."

Draco nodded shortly. He had never understood exactly how house-elf magic worked, how they could follow magical signatures and Apparate even inside places they shouldn't have been able to Apparate, but right now, he wasn't concerned with that. "Good. Then you can find him. Tell him I'm taking Scorpius to St. Mungo's, and I need him to come to me as soon as possible." With any luck, Izzy could catch Harry before he got too far into the meeting with his new client, or before he went to their house to see their children.

"Yes, Master Draco," said Izzy, and bobbed her head. She cast an anguished glance at Scorpius as she straightened that Draco knew how to read.

"Scorpius will be fine," he told her. _I won't let him be anything else. _

"Yes, Master Draco," Izzy said again, and vanished.

Draco headed straight towards the stairs. He could Apparate the moment he was outside the gates.

The distance had never seemed so long.

* * *

Harry was looking once more through the letter that this new client, Mrs. Wormwood, had sent him when he heard her knock on the door. She really hadn't sent him much information. She only said that her child was threatened, and she could use his help on making sure that the situation became less threatening.

_I might have to tell her to contact the Aurors, _Harry admitted to himself as he went to open the door. _On the other hand, I have Auror training, so—_

The thoughts all became so many ashes and leaves on the wind when he opened the door and found Ginny standing there.

She looked at him with distant eyes for a long moment before her eyelids began to quiver and she looked away from him, focusing down the street with immense interest. "Can I come in?" she whispered.

Harry felt as though someone had hit him with a Stunner. He closed his eyes and took in a breath deep enough to make his chest hurt. "I don't think that's a good idea," he said. "Not when you don't have anything to say that we haven't already said to each other."

"I have something new."

Harry opened his eyes. "Not if you're going to accuse me and Draco of threatening your child."

Ginny's eyes dropped. "It's more complicated than that," she said. "I think—I think I really need to talk to you. Please?"

Harry tapped his fingers on the door. He decided that he had to set conditions. "The minute you start arguing that you were right in what you wanted to do, or start telling me I should feel sorry for you or _you_ feel sorry for _me _because I can't have blood children, out you go." He paused, then added, "And the minute you say something horrible about Draco and Scorpius, out you go, too."

Ginny swallowed and nodded. "It's complicated. Can I come in?"

Harry stepped back and let her come in. She wandered around the office for a minute, touching the chairs that his clients sat in and peering out the window. Harry watched her and felt strangely numb. He would have said that he would have felt awkward, odd, to have her there. But he had never thought about it, and now he just didn't care.

He finally cleared his throat, and asked, "So. What do you mean?"

Ginny turned towards him. "I'm worried about what the negative publicity could do to my child," she said, and rested one hand possessively on her stomach. Harry's eyes were drawn to the soft swell of it, of course, and he looked away. "I know the public always turns on the ones they've supported. And they supported me."

"Only one paper," said Harry, in his numb voice. "Only for a while."

Ginny didn't respond. Harry turned around, and Ginny was standing with her back to him, looking out the window.

"How do you stand it?" Ginny whispered, her voice soft and distant. "I wanted—I wanted children _so badly_. I never knew I did until I thought I'd never have them. And then I wondered what it would do to Mum and Dad to know they would never have grandchildren."

"What are you talking about?" Harry demanded, even though he'd made a promise to himself not to get involved in whatever crazy thing she'd come to lecture him on. "They already had five grandchildren by then!"

"But none from their daughter." Ginny turned around, and Harry could see tears glittering in the corners of her eyes. "That's what Mum told me when I was little, that she couldn't wait to see me with daughters of my own in my arms."

Harry had no idea what to say. Ginny had never told him this before. Of course, he thought, he hadn't really asked. He had known what he had to know about the Weasleys from listening to Ron talk about them, and spending time with them at the Burrow. And Ginny had talked to him about the war and Quidditch and their marriage and how much she loved him and her job. Her childhood before she came to Hogwarts just didn't show up on a regular basis in their conversations.

"And I panicked," Ginny whispered, her voice dropping. "It got worse, it didn't get better. And it seemed like you wouldn't agree with me because you were just so _stubborn_, and I knew a way to get pregnant, and have everything be better."

"You had someone in mind that you wanted to sleep with, didn't you?" Harry asked. He tried to keep his voice as non-accusing as possible.

Ginny hesitated. Harry pounced.

"Yes, you did," he said, and his voice was going to get loud if he let it. He looked away, out the window himself, and thought about Draco, and Scorpius, and Teddy, and forcibly calmed himself down. "Someone who was going to give you what you wanted."

"I only thought of him _after _I knew that you couldn't have children," Ginny snapped. "And then I got divorced, and I found out he didn't want me back, and I married Michael, and I _still _didn't get pregnant for three years. I started panicking that I wouldn't be able to have blood children at all, no matter who I was married to, and that meant I might as well not have given up the marriage to you. Do you understand what that's like?"

Harry closed his hands into fists. He had sometimes thought, when he was writing as Ethan, that he understood how to love a wife better than children because of how much he had loved Ginny.

"Yeah," he said. "Reckon I do."

Ginny's head rocked on her neck a little, as though someone had slapped her. Harry hoped it was called reality.

She looked at him with wide, tearless eyes now. "So I was punished," she whispered, "And I suffered. But I don't want my child to have to listen to my name dragged through newspapers." She put her hand over her stomach again. "What can I do?"

Harry wondered if he should even bother answering. After all, she was the one who had gone to the papers in the first place. And although he could understand her motives now—he had done some crazy things himself because of panic, including trying to keep his secret from Draco—he didn't think that made him ready to forgive her or whatever she was really thinking of.

Then a house-elf appeared abruptly in front of him, and Ginny jumped. The elf didn't pay any attention to her, just bowed to Harry, and Harry recognized it—her—as Izzy, the one who was always hovering nearby to make sure that Scorpius didn't make so much of a mess during dinner.

"Yes?" Harry asked, cocking his head and avoiding glancing at Ginny, who had her knuckles pressed against her mouth. "What's wrong?"

"Master Draco Malfoy is needing you in St. Mungo's, Master Harry," said Izzy, and gave a sweeping bow that made Harry think she was about to start punishing herself. "Little master is sick."

That changed things so suddenly and clearly that Harry felt as though someone had opened a hole in his head to let in daylight.

Standing here and arguing with Ginny didn't matter. Whether he could understand what had gone through her head before they got divorced didn't matter. Maybe he would understand later if he still wanted to put in the mental effort. But right now, he didn't.

"Draco needs me," he said to Ginny. "Scorpius is sick." Even though she could have heard the elf's words for herself, Harry thought it would be more effective said in his voice.

It seemed to be. Emotions moved across Ginny's face like stormclouds for a second, and then she whispered, "They're more important to you than me, aren't they?"

"Yes," said Harry. "You moved on with your life—or at least it seemed as if you did. Why don't you go back to doing it, and let me do the same?"

Ginny stood there for a second as though she would say something else. Then she turned and walked out of the office.

Harry wasted no time in locking it up, hanging a sign on the door that would let people know he had been called away unexpectedly, and murmuring words of reassurance to Izzy as he ran down to the Apparition point. He would find Draco and reassure him in much the same way, and they would help Scorpius together.

That was what being with someone _meant_.

* * *

"How is he?"

Draco started. He'd been sitting beside Scorpius's bed and staring at him for so long that he had lost track of time, and he had thought that Harry might get here soon, or not at all. But somehow, Harry had got through what was probably some attempt by Healers at preserving their privacy. Draco reached up and clutched Harry's hand without looking away from Scorpius's bed.

"The Healers don't know exactly what's wrong," Draco admitted, tearing his eyes away from Scorpius with difficulty. Harry had crouched down next to him, looking and listening as attentively as though he was involved in an Auror case. Draco swallowed. Maybe he could think of it that way, the disease as an enemy that Harry was trained to defeat. He wasn't a Healer, but he knew a lot about magic. "He's feverish and he has a swelling on his side. I thought it was some sort of buildup of pus, but the Healers said not."

"They don't know what it _is_, though, right?" Harry asked.

Draco nodded. "They didn't want to cut it open, just in case something happened. They're coming up with some potions and spells they can use on the skin, and they gave him a pain-killer that would help him sleep." Not that Scorpius had needed help with that, honestly, except when a Healer had carelessly touched his swelling and he'd sat up with a cry of pain. But then he had slipped back into slumber frighteningly fast, his head thrashing back and forth and his lips making a mumbling, smacking noise.

"Hmmm," said Harry, and walked slowly around Scorpius. The Healers had wrapped him in a thin garment they could draw away from the swelling without waking him. Harry took hold of the side of it and glanced at Draco for permission.

Draco hesitated. It was one thing thinking instinctively that Harry could help, and another thing to think he was a Healer. But he nodded. He didn't think it could hurt, and he knew—he _knew_—that Harry wouldn't cause Scorpius pain.

Harry pulled the gown back, and stared for a second. His brows drew together. Then he nodded, and turned around to murmur to Draco. "He hasn't been having displays of accidental magic lately, has he?"

"He's never had them," said Draco, startled. "Or only one or two. He's too young for them, mostly." He managed to dredge up a smile. "He wouldn't be throwing things at the walls to break them if he could have just made them float over and shatter themselves, instead."

Harry didn't smile back. "I have seen something like this before. When a young wizard was frightened of his magic and trying to suppress it. The magic built up under his skin in this way."

"But that one was Muggleborn, right?" Draco demanded, knowing he must have been. "Scorpius has never been frightened to use his magic! He'd always know I welcomed it!"

"I was going to say," Harry said firmly, "that I've also seen it in cases where a young wizard had a nightmare and turned his magic inward to fight it. Magic isn't meant to be used like that, unless you're a trained Legilimens, and it leaves behind traces, because the children are too young to know when to stop. And it would explain why he's so sleepy. He wasn't really resting, he was fighting the nightmare."

Draco hesitated. "He has nothing to have nightmares about, either," he said, but he knew that his own voice was uncertain.

"It doesn't have to be traumatic experiences," said Harry gently, giving him a quick glance. "It can just be an ordinary nightmare of the kind that any five-year-old could have. But it was worse than most of the others, or he felt worse about it, and that meant he turned his magic inwards."

It sounded so convincing that Draco wanted to call the Healers back into the room and demand that they listen to what Harry was saying. On the other hand, he reminded himself again that Harry wasn't a Healer.

"If that's what it is, why didn't the Healers recognize it?"

Harry gave him a sad smile. "I had reasons to do a lot of research on nightmares, and means of curing them. I don't think most Healers here would have done that kind of in-depth research. And if he looks sick—which he does—the Healers would think of that before they thought of accidental magic or nightmares."

"Do you know how to get rid of it?" Draco held his breath a second later, as Harry's wand came to rest on top of the swelling.

"I do," Harry said. "Most nightmares aren't so easy, but it's really just the magic that's the problem here, and I can ease that." He tapped the swelling with his wand, making Scorpius squirm and frown in discomfort, and whispered, "_Tranquillitas, potentem._"

The swelling rippled for a second, and Draco almost opened his mouth to shout. But then it began to sink. It stopped sinking, and Harry withdrew his wand, and shook his head when Draco looked at him. "It takes a while for the magic to stop affecting Scorpius's mind and dissipate back into his body. But it'll keep going now."

Maybe it was Draco's imagination, but he thought Scorpius's face was gaining some of its normal color back, and he was breathing more easily. He reached one arm out as Harry started to step past him, and snared him, and dragged him close, and whispered, "You are a _miracle_."

"I'm yours," Harry said simply, and leaned in, and kissed him. "And the two of you are mine."

As he watched Scorpius's chest carefully rise and fall, as he felt Harry's arm around his shoulder, Draco was sure that was true.


	50. Choices He Can Live With

Thank you again for all the reviews! This is the last chapter of _Starfall_. Thanks for reading along.

_Chapter Fifty-Choices He Can Live With_

"Do you remember what the nightmare was about?" Harry asked Scorpius the question casually, with his eyes fastened on the paper in front of him as though he was entirely absorbed by the scandal that had erupted between the Falmouth Falcons' Seeker and the new Chaser for the Chudley Cannons.

"I didn't have a nightmare." Scorpius sounded as small and stuffy as though he was the perfect little Malfoy Draco had tried to train him to be.

Harry laid the paper down on his lap and regarded Scorpius for a moment. Scorpius was crouched over a wizarding chess set, moving back and forth as he randomly shoved both black and white pieces around the board. They were complaining in a steady chorus, but Draco had cast some kind of spell on them that muted their voices.

_Probably when he was still a kid, _Harry thought, his amusement carefully hidden, and said, "Then what was it? A bad dream?"

"_No_."

But Scorpius's shoulders had tensed and hunched, and Harry knew what that meant. He concealed a sigh and nodded. "All right. Then I suppose I can't tell you about my nightmares. I was going to, because I thought they might be similar to yours. But they're not going to be, I can tell." He picked up the paper again and turned the page. At least here were actual results of Quidditch games, instead of a story that he had a hard time reading.

"Wait! Uncle Harry! _You _had nightmares?" Scorpius's hand appeared around the edge of the paper.

Harry hid a smile and allowed his eyes to flicker towards the doorway that led from the drawing room to one of the side rooms in Malfoy Manor used for making guests wait. Draco stood there, out of sight from Scorpius. He had wanted to listen to the conversation Scorpius and Harry would have about the nightmare, but he had agreed that he shouldn't be there. "Yes. About the war. You know about the war?"

Draco was under a Disillusionment Charm, but Harry could still tell he had shifted. Yes, of course Draco didn't want Scorpius to know everything about his own family's past yet. But Harry had promised to contain the talk of the war within reasonable boundaries. That would have to be enough.

If Harry couldn't talk about the war at _all_, then he would have an extremely hard time talking about his nightmares.

Scorpius nodded, his attention less on the question than on what was going to follow it, Harry knew. "Yeah," he added, when Harry evidently wasn't speaking fast enough for him. "The war that the Dark Lord fought against you?"

Well, Harry supposed it would have been hard to keep knowledge of Harry's part in the war away from Scorpius even before he'd accidentally crashed into the Malfoys' lives. "Yes," he said. "I had all sorts of nightmares. About things that went wrong, things that went differently." He reached out and scooped Scorpius onto the couch beside him, absently wondering when that sort of thing had made his back start to hurt. "I had one particular nightmare about running across a field and not being able to reach my friends."

"That doesn't sound scary," said Scorpius. "Maybe you tripped on something that was in the way, or someone had set up a ward and you couldn't get to them."

Harry hid a smile with difficulty. Scorpius was really transparent when he wanted to hear more about something and was trying to make someone else say it with mockery. That was probably something Draco hadn't even deliberately taught him.

"Maybe it wouldn't have been," he agreed. "But in the nightmare, there were people standing behind my friends and holding wands on them."

"Did that _really _happen?"

"Maybe it did," said Harry, with a shrug. "Or part of it. My nightmares put parts together from different things I faced." He leaned in. "But no matter how hard I ran, the field got bigger and bigger, and I never got there. And I knew every moment I didn't get there, my friends were suffering pain."

No need to discuss the torture that Ron and Hermione had actually suffered in the dreams. That would wait for when Scorpius was older, if it needed to be mentioned at all. Harry didn't think children necessarily _needed _to know about torture.

"Wow," said Scorpius. "And you had other nightmares?"

Harry nodded, thinking back to his first year. "I was Sorted into Gryffindor at Hogwarts, you know that?" Scorpius nodded back at once. "But I was almost Sorted into Slytherin. The Sorting Hat told me I could have gone there. And it turned out the-You-Know-Who was already at the school, hiding inside a turban that the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher had on."

Scorpius looked as though he was about to wriggle himself off the couch. The ripple of movement by the doorway came into the corner of Harry's eye again. He thought Draco was uncertain whether he wanted his son to hear this or not, and Harry knew why. Scorpius might wake up with different bad dreams tonight.

_Not if I make the description of the nightmare less frightening than it actually was, though._

"Was the nightmare the turban smothering you?" Scorpius whispered.

"No," said Harry, startled. At least that gave him a little clue about Scorpius's nightmares, though: it was probably things he'd imagined rather than things he'd lived through, like his parents' divorce. Not that imaginary things couldn't be plenty scary. Harry remembered a few of them from his own childhood. "But I imagined I was wearing it, and it was telling me that I had to go to Slytherin. It was very important for some reason. And I couldn't get it off."

"That does sound bad," Scorpius muttered, and leaned against Harry's side. "I'm glad that you didn't die, Uncle Harry."

Harry gently smoothed back Scorpius's hair. "Me, too," he said, and they sat in silence for a while. If Scorpius was going to tell him about the dream, then he thought it would be now.

But nothing happened, except that Scorpius went to sleep after a while, breathing loudly while cuddled into Harry's side. Harry lifted a finger to his lips when Draco ended his Disillusionment and stepped into the room, which made Draco roll his eyes at him.

"It's a start," Draco murmured, and spent a moment gazing at Scorpius with such a tender expression that Harry felt a warm tide of relaxation spread through him. Draco had changed a _lot _from the man who had reached out in desperate hope of some help with his son.

"He'll tell you eventually," said Harry confidently, and reached for the newspaper again.

* * *

"Ginny told us what happened when she came to your office, mate."

Harry leaned back. He had spent the evening at Ron and Hermione's, playing with Rose and singing to Hugo, and he'd eaten a big dinner that he thought Molly had had some hand in preparing. Right now, he was pleasantly exhausted, and he had thought he and Ron and Hermione would only reminisce about Hogwarts and talk about the children without having to mention Ginny at all.

"Did she," said Harry, and Ron flinched a little from his tone, turning to look at Hermione with a pleading expression.

"She did," said Hermione, putting down her plate of cake and cocking her head at him. She looked sad and wise at the same time, and Harry found himself relaxing. He didn't think blame for him was what would come out of her mouth. "She said that your words gave her a lot to think about. And she isn't going to go to the papers anymore."

"Good," said Harry, and since he was feeling so full and content and warm, he decided he could be generous, too. "I think she should move on and enjoy her life with her husband and child."

"Can you enjoy yours as much, though, Harry?" Hermione's voice was gentle. "Is Scorpius Malfoy going to be enough to make up for not having blood children of your own?"

Harry rolled his eyes. "I assume you think Teddy and Rose and Hugo wouldn't be enough, even when you were urging me to consider their claims superior to Scorpius's?"

"But you _know _them," Ron explained earnestly. "They're the children of your _friends_."

"And Scorpius is the son of my lover," said Harry, and shook his head when Ron flinched a little. "You'll have to accept it sooner or later, Ron. Besides, there have always been differences. Teddy is older than Rose and Hugo, and he isn't the son of someone who was a schoolmate of mine in the same way you were. Do you feel like I love Rose and Hugo less because I've known Teddy longer?"

"No," Ron murmured, with Hermione following suit a second later.

"So." Harry spread his hands. "Sure, this is new and everyone is going to need some time to accept it. But you can't think that I'm going to suddenly 'wake up' and decided that I never loved Draco or Scorpius."

"I still don't understand exactly how you decided that it was a good idea to date each other!"

Harry raised his eyebrows. "I can explain part of that, but it involves Ethan, and a few things that Draco probably wouldn't want me to tell you. Say that I wrote to Draco as Ethan, and eventually he found out the truth, and decided that he really wanted to know why I'd done it. And it also involves Teddy, and Draco contributing some blood to a potion for him. We decided to give each other some second chances, and they worked out."

"Blood for a _potion_?" Hermione looked a little faint. "So it was blood magic? You didn't mention that before, Harry!"

Harry rolled his eyes. "It wasn't blood magic, it was a legal potion, but yes, the Ministry might look a little askance at it. Are you going to go out and tattle on me to the Ministry, Hermione?" He put his hand beneath his chin and considered her. "If I thought you would, I wouldn't have told you," he added.

Hermione sat back in her chair and looked flustered for long enough that Harry had to wonder if his trust had been misplaced. Then she smiled, reluctantly. "You know I won't, Harry. I'm only a little shocked, that's all."

Harry nodded. "Well, I'm tired of having enough distance between us for you to get shocked. I'm tired of acting as though Ginny is the only one entitled to have you as part of her family." He locked eyes with Ron. "And I'm tired of tiptoeing around everything because you love Ginny or don't like Draco. Can we stop that? Can we start talking about what's _really _going on, and you can stop hoping that Ginny will divorce Michael and remarry me, and I'll walk away from Draco?"

Ron coughed, with a red face. "I knew that wouldn't happen," he muttered. "She does seem happy with Michael."

"And I'm happy with Draco," Harry said. "I know you don't believe that right now, but I hope you will."

Ron hesitated, then shrugged. "Bloody hell, mate. If you are, then I'll try to accept it. It'll just take some time."

Harry relaxed. "If I wasn't willing to give you that, I wouldn't be here at all."

The conversation went more smoothly than that, and Harry went home that night feeling happier than he had in a long time. He felt as if he was really getting his friends back, not people whom he loved but had to censor himself in front of all the time because he might offend something they felt for Ginny.

_Telling the truth was the right thing to do. I didn't even realize how much I was reining myself in, just in case some bad memory of my marriage came up._

But his marriage was permanently dead, and Harry had a life to live.

* * *

Draco knew his face was flushed; it was probably the reason Harry had glanced at him in concern more than once while they were waiting for the Floo to open. But he could only shake his head and take Harry's hand in his, hard, which seemed to be all Harry needed to understand some of his anxiety.

Harry smiled, and then the Floo connection opened and they stepped in and were whirled through it into his parents' house. Harry actually stepped gracefully out of the Floo, and caught Draco before he could stumble, instead of the other way around.

"If this is too hard for you, we'll leave," Harry murmured into Draco's ear while he assisted him back up. "I don't care if they are your family. We'll have plenty of time for me to formally meet them."

"No," Draco hissed. He'd come this far, and he was furious at himself for his stumble as well as for the heat that wouldn't leave his cheeks. "We made it all this way. I'll be damned if I'll turn my back now."

Harry smiled, his approval so bright that Draco thought he could feel it heat him the way the sun would. Maybe it was only approval of Draco's courage, but Draco found it hard to give a-a _shit _about that, either.

"Draco." There was a slight pause that Draco knew was the height of rudeness for his mother, but he also thought it unlikely that someone unfamiliar with his mother would notice it. "Mr. Potter."

"Mrs. Malfoy." Harry turned to Narcissa as though she was someone he was meeting at a Ministry party, smiling and bowing over her hand when she extended it. "Thank you for inviting me."

His mother gave Draco a bewildered stare. Draco lifted his shoulders in silence. He and Harry hadn't discussed how Harry was going to greet his parents, or frankly, anything other than subjects they shouldn't bring up and hoped his parents didn't, either.

_If Mother is so startled Harry was polite, she must have a low opinion of him._

Or of Gryffindor, or of people who had fought the Dark Lord, or of people who had been involved in the trials, even if it was mostly as a witness. Draco stifled a sigh. He still sometimes found it difficult to understand his parents' priorities, even though he had spent so long trying to live up to the "example" his father had set when he was raising Scorpius.

"Mr. Potter." His father strolled slowly into the room. Harry stood there and regarded him with calm eyes. "Welcome to our home."

"Thank you, Mr. Malfoy." Harry had no ice in his voice, and Draco watched in amusement as his father's jaw tightened anyway. Lucius would take the _lack _of ice as worse, in some ways, than an outright insult, as it said Harry didn't care enough about Draco's parents to bother with coldness. "What are we having for dinner?"

"We leave such decisions to our house-elves." Lucius paused for long enough that Draco knew what would come next, but he didn't know how to prevent it. Probably on purpose, Lucius was far enough away that Draco couldn't step on his foot. "The ones we have left."

"Oh, yes, it was nice of you to leave so many with Draco when you gave him the Manor," said Harry cheerfully. "I think he needed a lot of them to help deal with Scorpius. The _tantrums _he has sometimes!"

Lucius forgot himself, and stared. Hell, Draco was on the verge of doing that himself. He bit his lip savagely to stop from doing so, and nodded to his mother. "Shall I lead the way, Mother? Or were you planning on doing that?"

"I can," said Narcissa, and bowed her head as she swept off. Draco relaxed, especially when he saw his mother make a small beckoning gesture with one finger, and his father follow at once. Narcissa knew when a social trap had failed and it was best to prove one could go along to get along. Lucius respected her judgment in such matters enough that he wouldn't try to make this dinner more awkward than it had to be later, either.

"That was _magnificent_," Draco breathed into Harry's ear as they followed. "How did you come up with a retort that quickly?" He hadn't known his father would bring up the loss of Dobby. It was something that might happen, but he had trusted more in his father's society manners than that.

"I've had lots of practice with boring people at Ministry galas." Harry shrugged one shoulder. "I still blame him for a lot of what he did while we were in Hogwarts, but if I couldn't be polite to him, I would never have agreed to come here."

Draco nodded. "And I apologize for the fool that he made of himself."

Harry gave him a slashing smile. "I helped him make it." His hand curled inside Draco's. "But I won't deliberately embarrass him, just foil the way that he tries to lash out at me."

Draco nodded. "Do that as well as you did just then, and you'll have my mother on your side. She can't stand it when my father brings up old grudges so ungracefully."

In fact, the rest of the dinner-roasted duck in a delicate berry sauce was the main course-went as well as could be expected. Lucius sat stiff-lipped at the head of the table, but Narcissa engaged Harry in conversation about people he'd known at the Ministry, the details of his new business, and even how he had come to like living in Malfoy Manor and helping Draco raise Scorpius.

Draco had calmed down by the time they went home. Yes, not every evening would flow as smoothly as this one, and perhaps it wasn't smooth unless you ignored the bump of Lucius in the corner, but it was a beginning.

* * *

"Are you really over it, then?"

Draco's voice was gentle behind him. Harry didn't turn his eyes away from Teddy and Scorpius, who were circling on practice brooms in front of them. Andromeda had enchanted the brooms not to be able to go more than six feet from the ground, after a particularly adventurous "accident" had happened last time they were here. Harry personally thought it wasn't an accident at all, more a sign of Teddy trying to perform a Wronski Feint for his little cousin, but Andromeda's reaction at least wasn't over the top.

"Not being able to have blood children?" Harry felt Draco nod behind him, and he leaned back into him. Draco shifted his posture a little. Andromeda's outside chairs really needed a renewal of their Cushioning Charms. Harry redid the ones on their chairs while he thought about Draco's question.

He would probably always regret some things about the curse: that it had meant he had such arguments with his friends and Ginny, for one thing. And he would regret the way he and Draco had hurt each other over him writing as Ethan. But it was hard to regret other things, and when he leaned against Draco and murmured the words, that was the essence of what he had to say.

"I can't regret the chance to get to know you and Scorpius. I can regret the way it started."

"Yes," said Draco, and looped one arm around his shoulder. He smiled briefly as Teddy dived and Scorpius followed him, but his gaze remained on the side of Harry's face. Harry could feel it burning there. "I just wondered...if there was a chance to adopt a child, would you want to do it?"

Harry blinked and glanced at Draco. "Are you thinking of that?" He hadn't thought Draco was really interested in raising more than one child, especially when Scorpius was still a challenge on a regular basis.

"I might think about it more seriously, if you wanted it."

Harry shook his head slowly. "Right now, it's not a deep-rooted longing." More work in his business had convinced him that not only would most wizarding orphans be adopted by more distant family at once, but that most of those families did a pretty good job taking care of those orphans. "Maybe when Scorpius is older? Maybe when he goes to Hogwarts? Then we can change our minds if we want to."

Draco smiled slightly. "Of course we can. We can change our minds about all sorts of things." And they turned around again, to watch Teddy and Scorpius play.

* * *

Harry changed his mind about something that night.

He reached up and caught Draco's wrist as he leaned in to kiss him. Draco blinked when he saw the way Harry was staring at him. "What?" That was the look Harry would give him when he thought they needed to discuss some tantrum of Scorpius's.

"I want you," said Harry, and Draco started to nod, because that was pretty obvious at the moment, given that Harry was sprawled naked and hard on his bed. "On top, this time."

Draco felt his eyes widening and his smile softening, meaning he probably looked like a sentimental idiot, but there was no one here except someone who would never think he was an idiot for it. So that was all right.

"_Yes_," he offered, and took Harry's mouth in a kiss again, urging him up towards the pillows.

He had intended to go through a gentle, smooth seduction, taking as long as they both needed, but from the way Harry spread his legs and snorted when Draco started talking about the right amount of lube, that wasn't what Harry _wanted._ Draco hooked his fingers into Harry's hole, smeared with lube but still faster than he would have taken it otherwise, and Harry arched his back and tapped Draco's arm with one heel.

"Faster."

_Well, all right, then, _Draco thought, his own spirit rising to the challenge. _And we'll see if this is the way he wants it when he realizes what it entails._

He slid his fingers in and spread them wider, and Harry abruptly gasped. Draco would have backed off and apologized in most situations, but this time he held still, stroking, until Harry looked at him and nodded.

After that, Draco lost track of time. There were his fingers, and Harry's eyes, and the warmth waiting for him, and the eagerness visible in the taut lines of Harry's body, and then there was the warmth actually _embracing _him as he slid inside, and Harry was so shiningly wide-eyed beneath him that Draco had to reach out and stroke his forehead.

Harry grinned back at him and tilted his head challengingly to the side. "Going to fuck me or not?" he whispered.

"You're far too coherent," Draco whispered back, and started moving.

Or maybe it was _moving_. Every motion he made was repeated and fluttering between the both of them, the beat of Draco's heart in his ears echoed by the beat of Harry's heart beneath his hands, the slam of their hips echoing each other's, and Harry's gasps matched by the sensation, if not the sound, of the grunts in Draco's own chest. He couldn't hear his own gasps with his heartbeat going so hard.

It went harder and harder for both of them, Draco spiraling higher, Harry right behind him, until the moment Harry arched and came with maddening slickness against Draco's stomach. Draco followed so quickly it was almost humiliating, except that Harry stroking his back and whispering soft nonsense in his ear could never be humiliating.

Then Harry relaxed against him and said, "Yeah. That was more than worth it."

His voice was so contented, so satisfied, that Draco knew the answer to the question he had asked earlier. _Are you really over it, then?_

Part of Harry probably would never cease regretting that he couldn't have blood children. He might want a child later in life, after Scorpius had gone to Hogwarts, exactly as he said, or even earlier.

But the rest of what Harry wanted, his happiness, was right here, in the bed with him, and sleeping down the corridor.

And so was Draco's.

**The End.**


End file.
